Scientology's new psycho-out museum

New York Post/November 20, 2005
By Philip Recchia

Scientology is taking its fight against psychiatry to the streets - namely Sunset Boulevard.

The church will open a "Psychiatry: Industry of Death" museum next month in L.A., complete with vintage instruments of torture, images of electroshock therapy and "rare archival footage of psychiatry's brutal treatments."

Created by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights [CCHR] - which was founded by the church in 1969 "to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights" - the museum will also show new documentaries featuring "dozens of medical doctors, attorneys [and] educators."

Top church officials were in New York last week promoting the exhibit at the International Association of Scientologists' annual meeting.

"It was like stepping into a time warp," one source, who attended the meeting, told The Post. "All this horrific turn-of-the-century stuff that hardly exists anymore - patients convulsing from electroshock therapy, torture caps on people's head, Pavlov and his dogs."

Before a clip from one "educational" documentary was introduced, a church spokesman warned the audience that some images were "too gruesome to show" with "women and children" present, the source said.

According to Scientology, psychiatry is the root of all evil on the planet.

"The psychs [have] destroyed every great civilization to date and are hard at work on this one," church founder L. Ron Hubbard wrote in 1982.

Tom Cruise entered into a a high-profile battle with the profession this summer by declaring on the "Today" show that "psychiatry is a pseudo-science."

He also criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to deal with her postpartum depression.

The museum, which opens to the public on Dec. 16, will be housed on the ground floor of CCHR's headquarters on Sunset Boulevard.

CCHR did not return calls seeking comment.