25 September 1969
The Independent Journal Published by the Church of Scientology
This article appeared in
Freedom on the above date. It is being reproduced on the Internet in
Canberra as a public favour by the Church of Scientology of Canberra.
Tangled
Terms
By
L. Ron Hubbard
In their anxiety to keep
their failures explained while they ask congresses, parliamentarians
and legislatures for millions to put in their pockets, psychiatry
continually redefines key words relating to the mind.
Their "diseases" have
become entirely different diseases over the last quarter of a century -
and none of them have come any closer to be cured.
The
German, Kraepelin, had a scale of mental diseases that became so long
and involved (once said to number fifteen hundred), and on which there
was so little agreement that it was largely abandoned.
Freud
had a number of mental diseases but these terms are not in extensive
use today.
What is amazing is the psychiatric tendency to try to describe rather
than to cure.
Schizophrenia and paranoia seem to be the modern favorite terms. But
paranoia today becomes schizophrenia!
To
these tangled terms today is added "incurable." If onecan'tcure
something, the only way to maintain an authoritative pose about it is
to say itcan'tbe
cured. This also excuses absorbing all those funds with nothing to
show. But if all these "diseases" areknownto
be incurable, then why spend money researching them?
The main point of all these tangled terms today is that anyone can be
said to have some form of insanity just by saying a big word. As no one
has agreed what the word means or what the symptoms are, this leaves
the psychiatrists as an "authority." In court and sanitarium, all he
has to do is say, "Hm, er, hurumph, he's a - ahem - borderline
catatonic with - er - ahem - symptoms of paranoia - hm, hurumph."
It sounds impressive and the fact that he is about to be disabled for
life, so frightening to the person in question that even jurisprudence
is swayed. And some poor guy is sent to a living hell.
Confidence tricksters, bamboozlers, flimflam artists and psychiatrists
have all mastered the same tricks. To say long words impressively to
three quarters of the game in "taking a mark."
At least one world dictionary, unable to find psychiatric texts to
quote, uses phrases from theNew York Timesand
fromThe New Yorkermagazine
to define psychiatric terms. Maybe it is or isn't intentional but The
New Yorker is world renowned as a humor magazine.
Lord Dunsany's* famous story about the day the temple fell is a
wonderful example. Somebody walked into the temple one day and pulled
back the curtain on the holy of holies, the all powerful and mysterious
shrine that had overawed the world. There was nothing there!
That is what is happening
to psychiatry today. The outpoured government millions brought no cures
but only a lot of tangled terms and how they were all incurable.
When the curtain was pulled back, all that was behind it was PRO,
public brag and an empty hole.
If society wants insanity handled as a social problem, don't go to the
boys who have increased the insanity statistics for a century and who
have only tangled terms to show for it. Go get the people who know what
they are doing - the Scientologists.
L. RON HUBBARD
Founder
*Lord Dunsany:title
of Edward John Moreton Drat Plunkett (1878-1957) Irish poet, playwright
and writer of short stories.
