New Scientology Book Has a Scene from The Master—Starring Tom Cruise
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Posted Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013, at 2:41 PM ET
Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell in The Master.
The Weinstein Company © 2012.
Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize winner who also earned a National Magazine Award for theexhaustive reporting on Scientology he did for The New Yorker, has expanded on the subject in his new book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. This morning The Hollywood Reporter excerpted one of the book’s most gossip-friendly sections, on the church’s relationship with Tom Cruise.
The focus of the article is Cruise’s buddy-buddy relationship with David Miscavige, Scientology’s current leader, and the many distinctive ways they’ve feted each other’s egos. Cruise reportedly based his performance as the Navy hero in A Few Good Men, Danny Kaffee, on Miscavige. In 2004, Miscavige hosted a party for Cruise’s 42nd birthday on board the Scientology ship the Freewinds, including clips and songs from many of Cruise’s movies. (Cruise took the mic himself for “Old Time Rock and Roll.”)
But one of the excerpt’s most striking scenes describes how Cruise trained to become a leader in the church, at the Gold Base, a Scientology outpost in the desert outside Los Angeles. One of Cruise’s first “audits” was Marc Headley, according to Headley himself, who described the encounter in his own memoir. Headley says that Cruise led him through something called the Upper Indoctrination Training Routines. Here’s how Wright describes the experience:
The focus of the article is Cruise’s buddy-buddy relationship with David Miscavige, Scientology’s current leader, and the many distinctive ways they’ve feted each other’s egos. Cruise reportedly based his performance as the Navy hero in A Few Good Men, Danny Kaffee, on Miscavige. In 2004, Miscavige hosted a party for Cruise’s 42nd birthday on board the Scientology ship the Freewinds, including clips and songs from many of Cruise’s movies. (Cruise took the mic himself for “Old Time Rock and Roll.”)
But one of the excerpt’s most striking scenes describes how Cruise trained to become a leader in the church, at the Gold Base, a Scientology outpost in the desert outside Los Angeles. One of Cruise’s first “audits” was Marc Headley, according to Headley himself, who described the encounter in his own memoir. Headley says that Cruise led him through something called the Upper Indoctrination Training Routines. Here’s how Wright describes the experience:
“Look at the wall,” Cruise would have said, according to Hubbard's specifications. “Thank you. Walk over to the wall. Thank you. Touch the wall. Thank you.” The purpose of this exercise, according to Hubbard, is to “assert control over the preclear and increase the preclear’s havingness.”
If those directions sound familiar, you’ve probably seen The Master: They match almost exactly the lines Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) says to Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) in one of the movie’s most memorable scenes. Other sequences from the Scientology-inspired film were taken almost verbatim from the religion’s handbooks—the “processing” scene uses several questions from Scientology’s “Oxford Capacity Analysis” test, as PTA has since acknowledged. But accounts of this touch-the-wall training practice have been harder to come by.
The excerpt also touches on such popular topics as the church’s possible role in Cruise’s relationships, and is worth reading in full at The Hollywood Reporter. Wright’s book was just dropped by its British publisher after Wright reportedly received “innumerable” threatening letters from the notoriously litigious church. (The publisher says that these threats were not the reason it dropped the book.) But it is set to be published by Knopf in the U.S. on Jan. 17. If it’s anything like Wright’s New Yorker article, it will also be worth reading from beginning to end.
The excerpt also touches on such popular topics as the church’s possible role in Cruise’s relationships, and is worth reading in full at The Hollywood Reporter. Wright’s book was just dropped by its British publisher after Wright reportedly received “innumerable” threatening letters from the notoriously litigious church. (The publisher says that these threats were not the reason it dropped the book.) But it is set to be published by Knopf in the U.S. on Jan. 17. If it’s anything like Wright’s New Yorker article, it will also be worth reading from beginning to end.
SCIENTOLOGISTS REALLY, REALLY HATE PSYCHIATRISTS
"Psychiatry: An Industry of Death" is a multi-million dollar museum and visitor center that the Citizens Commission on Human Rights set up in Los Angeles. CCHR is an organization cofounded by the Church of Scientology. The descision to keep their name out of CCHR's title makes it less likely people will say "lol, shut up, Scientology" when they visit the museum.
When you enter the building signs instruct you not to take photos, and they take your bag away, so this post is gonna be picture-less. My original plan was to go in with a hidden camera and take covert photos, but I was told by our legal people that this would lead to the Church of Scientology literally suing me to death. Soz. But, if you're interested, the museum looks like this inside.
Anyway, below are some things I learned about psychiatrists and psychologists at the museum that I totally didn't realize before. Prepare to have your EYES OPENED.
THE DEATH OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
This is the first truth-bomb the museum unleashes on you. Did you know that Benjamin Rush (the first person to write a book on psychiatry in America) was the person who suggested they use blood-letting on George Washington, causing Washington to bleed to death?
According to the text on the exhibit, "The father of American psychology killed the father of the United States of America." Not off to a great start there, psychology.
THE 9/11 TERRORIST ATTACKS
Under a giant photo of the exploding towers, text explains how evil psychiatrists were responsible for 9/11:
"Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group, al-Qaeda, perpetrated the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. One of Bin Laden's top aides is Egyptian psychiatrist Ayman al-Zawahiri, known as "Bin Laden's brain."
Wait, psychiatrists were responsible for 9/11? Why would they do such a thing?
"Within days of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, psychiatrists were predicting that as many as 30% of people affected initially by the attacks would develop 'post traumatic stress disorder' and demanded $3 billion in funding to deliver treatments. Antidepressant sales in New York soared immediately afterwards."
Ohhhhhhhh, got it!
ALL OTHER TERRORISM
But it's not just 9/11 these guys masterminded:
"Research into the engineers of terror atrocities show a dominance of psychiatric and psychological practicing and the typical tools of their trade: drugs and coercive methods."
For instance, did you know that the Egyptian psychiatrist who was bros with bin Laden also once released a statement about the 7/7 bombings? Did you also know that there's a psychiatrist somewhere in the Middle East who once said that suicide bombers considered their behavior to be normal? Or that the Unabomber came into contact with psychiatric professionals on SEVERAL occasions? Or that the leader of the cult that did the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway was a psychiatrist? Or that kamikaze pilots often took amphetamines, a drug that is often prescribed BY PSYCHIATRISTS?
THE HOLOCAUST
K, so here's a history lesson: Back in 1879, a German psychologist named Willhelm Wundt claimed that the soul didn't exist, and that people were like any other animal. Which, according to one of the boards in the museum, can be easily disproven:
"Dogs do not drive cars, horses will never paint masterpieces and concertos have yet to be performed by an orchestra of monkeys."
Obviously, this isn't true anymore, dogs DO drive cars. However, the other two points stand. Despite this, psychologists decided to try and change people's behavior in the same way they would with animals—by using aversion therapy. As the museum tells it: "this belief that force can monitor thinking laid the foundation for one of the most destructive eras in man's history."
Cut to: The 40s, and there's this dude called Hitler, who, thanks to Willhelm saying people were animals, thought it was TOTALLY OK to do all kinds of shitty stuff to the Jewish/gay/disabled/gypsy populations of Europe. Oh, and do you know why Hitler was so down on Jews n' stuff? Because of his interest in a little thing called "eugenics," which is a form of (you guessed it) PSYCHIATRY. And this is how the holocaust happened. Or as this museum calls it, "a psychiatric movement that would cause the deaths of millions."
PS approximately 40 percent of German psychiatrists VOLUNTARILY joined the SS. Because their "their beliefs were very, very similar."
Case closed.
RACISM
This part of the museum is a little jumbled and confusing, but the gist of it is: every single act of racism in the last couple of hundred years has been the result of a secret plot by a global gang of psychologists and psychiatrists. Including, but not limited to: The KKK ("bizarre psychological theories like eugenics inspired the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan"), apartheid ("the so-called scientific basis for apartheid in South Africa came from racially biased IQ testing"), slavery (psychiatrists claimed that runaway slaves were suffering from a condition known as Drapetomania), and segregation ("By 1922, American eugenicist Paul Popenoe had added his racist theory that intelligence was determined by blood").
THE DEATH OF ART
There's a room in the museum dedicated to showing how "psychiatry infiltrated Hollywood" and ruined EVERYTHING. This is shown using the very subtle visual metaphor of a giant gravestone that says "CREATIVITY" on it.
Surrounding the gravestone are headshots of famous creatives whose bright, shining lights were prematurely extinguished by psychiatrists. People like Kurt Cobain ("Cobain was prescribed Ritalin, a drug known to lead to illegal drug abuse"), Marilyn Monroe ("On her last day, she saw psychiatrist Ralph Greenson for 6 hours before succumbing to a drug overdose"), Judy Garland ("she was subjected to the violence and degredation of electroshock"), and Stevie Nicks ("Stevie saw a psychiatrist after kicking cocaine to ensure she would stay off drugs").
SCHOOL SHOOTINGS
"Psychiatric propaganda on child education has thoroughly deceived well-meaning parents, teacher and politicians into believing that normal childhood behavior is a mental illness, and that only by heavy drugging from an early age can an afflicted child make it through his schooling life."
Did you know that Eric Harris was on anti-depressants when Columbine happened? Or that Kip Kinkel was on Prozac when he went on a shooting spree? In fact, if you look into it, almost every perpetrator of a school shooting was on some kind of psychiatric medication at the time of their crime. I can think of no other common thread that might link teenage spree-killers and psychiatric drugs than evil, child murdering, psychiatric mind-controllers.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FUTURE
Oh, and as if high school massacres weren't enough of a bummer, the psychiatric industry is also making America's kids stoopid:
"...the USA fell from 9th to 26th in worldwide academic standing, in that time ADHD drug sales have multiplied 118 fold."
Coincidence?
This is only a small selection of things they claim psychologists/psychiatrists are responsible for. There's also sections on rape and mind control and torture and Bosnia and labotomies and Big Pharma which I'm not gonna go into, because eughhhhhhhhhhh.
If you're thinking "meh, who's gonna listen to what some Scientologists say?" there's a sign in sheet when you arrive at the hospital where you have to write down your name and profession. Over half of the people who had signed in on the day I arrived were some kind of medical industry professional. I also heard a teenage boy on the phone say to his friend, "The Holocaust had to do with a psychiatrist who messed with people's brains or some shit. I never knew that."
Yayy!
Oh, and lastly, as I was leaving the museum, the guy who worked there told me I should check out a rapper named Chill EB, who is a Scientologist and makes songs about the psychiatric industry:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
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