Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes Divorce: Psychiatry & Scientology Face Off?

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The competing rubrics of Scientology and Psychiatry, as seen in the context of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ divorce, gets a hearing on Fox News.com. Psychiatrist Keith Ablow writes; “If Scientology has veered toward mind control and cult-like tactics to cower its members into remaining affiliated with the organization, then it has lost its birthright—originally rooted in the notion that individuals make choices… And to the extent that psychiatry has abandoned helping people talk about their lives and understand their souls, in favor of quickly labeling them with disorders and prescribing them medications, my field has abandoned its birthright too.”

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Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole
Kermit Cole, MFT, founding editor of Mad in America, works in Santa Fe, New Mexico as a couples and family therapist. Inspired by Open Dialogue, he works as part of a team and consults with couples and families that have members identified as patients. His work in residential treatment — largely with severely traumatized and/or "psychotic" clients — led to an appreciation of the power and beauty of systemic philosophy and practice, as the alternative to the prevailing focus on individual pathology. A former film-maker, he has undergraduate and master's degrees in psychology from Harvard University, as well as an MFT degree from the Council for Relationships in Philadelphia. He is a doctoral candidate with the Taos Institute and the Free University of Brussels. You can reach him at [email protected].

7 COMMENTS

  1. That’s the most bizarre ‘outreach’ I’ve ever seen from a psychiatrist to scientology. Thank you for sharing it.

    Of course it is only valuable as an artifact of bizarre ‘outreach’, nothing else. Ablow is the hatemonger who wrote a horrific piece about Chaz Bono.

    Ablow notes the accusations of abuse against scientology but makes no mention of the institutionalized abuse psychiatry carries out every day against countless helpless captives.

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  2. This has the hallmark of The Third Party Law and the ones in the background are the sickos in big pharma and above that again, but their minions are the psychiatrists. Both are now on the downward slide of the steepest cliff in their history. It will be a saviour to all of Man to see the back of them, but the destruction of a relationship is what Katie will have decided on, and not because of differences of faith but because of brainwashing by those influential people.

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  3. As a lawyer, I can see this playing out legally in very interesting ways. The Church of Scientology vs the Church of Psychiatry, the battle of the century! I am of course, no friend of either, although the Church of Psychiatry demands human sacrifices and the Church of Scientology doesn’t.

    If the lawyers on the wife’s side (and I have no interest in either side in this divorce) try to argue that Cruise’s connection to Scientology makes him an unfit father, and they probably will, there are religious freedom legal issues here. But more importantly, the shrinks are going to run up against something they are not used to: the other side having huge resources to fight back. The Scientologists have access to many high-powered lawyers, and you can be sure that they will fight back, not just with religious freedom arguments that, while valid, will bore the public. If the Church of Psychiatry is going to try to discredit the Scientologists, the Scientologists will almost have to fight back by putting the validity of all of psychiatry in question.

    And this discrediting of psychiatry is not going to happen just in little-read forums like ours. It is going to unfold to an audience of millions and millions of people. And the psychiatrists can’t dismiss it all by saying that their opponents are Scientologists, lol. That won’t work in a closely-watched legal proceeding. The shrinks are going to have to defend the credibility of (most probably) the labels they will put on Cruise. I think what I describe is very likely to happen, since the Church of Psychiatry tends to be very arrogant, and expects, at most, that the Scientologists will just trot out another psychiatrist on their side. What fun. I can hardly wait. Anyone want to place a bet with me? LOL.

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  5. Ablow is supposing Holmes will enlist forensic psychiatrists in her suit against Cruise, but it’s only his fantasy now.

    It would be darned amusing to see psychiatry vs Scientology in court, though, the clash of two massive edifices of manure.

    Ablow writes “It is no surprise, therefore, that L. Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology, offered his insights to the American Psychiatric Association. And it is no surprise, given that organization’s own rigidity, that he was rebuffed. The ill-will that ensued has only intensified over the decades since.”

    Wonder if that’s true? Undermines Scientology’s anti-psychiatry as purely humanitarian, implying it’s a grudge thing. Entirely believable of Scientology.

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