Tangled Terms- An Essay
By L. Ron Hubbard
This article was first published on 25 September 1969 The Independent Journal Published by the Church of Scientology.
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 one can’t cure something, the only way to maintain an authoritative pose about it is to say itcan’t be cured. This also excuses absorbing all those funds with nothing to show. But if all these “diseases” are known to 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 the New York Times and from The New Yorker magazine 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.
PRO: Public relations officer type hype.
For another great article, please read A Reason Why Psychiatric Front Groups Attack Scientology.
And for more on Scientology, there is also this here in the Church of Scientology Canberra.
There are more articles in the Category: Philosophy.
Also see CCHR International.
Tags: canberra, freedom, hubbard, l ron hubbard, psychiatry, scientology