'I'm passionate about life -'CRUISE 'WAR OF WORLDS'

MSNBC ^ | 6/24/05 | Today show

[Tumbleweed_Connection]

...Lauer: Katie has mentioned that she is embracing, or at least exposing herself and opening herself up to, Scientology. At this stage in your life, could you be with someone who doesn't have an interest?

Cruise: You know, Scientology is something that you don't understand. It's like, you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist, okay. Scientology is something—

Lauer: So, it doesn't replace religion.

Cruise: It is a religion. Because it's dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being. It gives you tools you can use to apply to your life.

We asked Cruise to explain his recent comments regarding Brooke Shields. Cruise created a firestorm when he criticized Shields for revealing that she went into therapy and took antidepressants to deal with her postpartum depression. Cruise has said that, as a Scientologist, he doesn't believe in psychiatric medicine.

Cruise: I've never agreed with psychiatry, ever. Before I was a Scientologist I never agreed with psychiatry. And when I started studying the history of psychiatry, I understood more and more why I didn't believe in psychology.

And as far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you got to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields. I think, here's a wonderful and talented woman. And I want to see her do well. And I know that psychiatry is a pseudo science.

Lauer: But Tom, if she said that this particular thing helped her feel better, whether it was the antidepressants or going to a counselor or psychiatrist, isn't that enough?

Cruise: Matt, you have to understand this. Here we are today, where I talk out against drugs and psychiatric abuses of electric shocking people, okay, against their will, of drugging children with them not knowing the effects of these drugs...

[american spirit]

I think we all could do without his brand of conservatism....in light of his stance on illegal immigration, fed'l spending, free trade at all costs, etc. the White House operator should change her greeting to: " Greetings....you have reached the White House, where CONSERVATISM is just a word".

[frgoff]

Cruise doesn't even have a college education.

College educations are highly overrated.

[RedWhiteBlue]

I actually agree with Tom Cruise. He says psychiatry is a pseudo science and of course it is. It is a crap science for liberal art students able to do a little math and biology. Sort of a medium grade science subject.

While I don't dispute your claim that Psychiatry seems to be a pseudo science, it generally isn't something that liberal arts students end up doing.

To become a Psychiatrist, one must first get extremely good grades in college (usually in the "hard sciences," like chemistry and biology), get accepted into medical school, graduate from med school and become an MD. Then they choose further years of study in psychiatry as a specialty (just like someone else might choose to specialize in general surgery, family practice, OB-GYN, nephrology, gatroenterology, etc.). One Psychiatrist that is well known in politics is Charles Krauthammer, MD.

Maybe you are confusing Psychiatry with psychologists (bachelors, masters, or PhD in psychology) or "therapists" (who probably have a college degree in something, but have taken courses in perhaps "Marriage and Family Counceling" and go hang up a shingle and open up for business afterwards.

PS -- I'm not taking up for any of these professions -- I don't actually know any Psychiatrists, psychologists, or therapists. Thank goodness I've never needed any of them. I just wanted to point out that becoming a Psychiatrist is not the end result of a liberal arts degree.

[NotSoFreeStater]

Check out www.szasz.com

[Conservative Texan Mom]

No Kidding!!! A Tom Cruise impersonation of a smart guy, "Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt, you don't understand this stuff. I, however, do. Matt, Matt, Matt.....Matt, I'm Tom Cruise, I know what I'm talking about. You, however, do not. Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt.....Matt, oh you poor little Matt. I play smart people in the movies, that should be enough for you to trust my opinions."

Condescending little twit!

[hispanichoosier]

Brooke Shields made her life public when she wrote her book. Why shouldn't Tom Cruise or anyone else comment about her choices since she's gone public?!

He's free to do so, but we're free to excoriate him for attacking Shields. IMHO, what he's going around saying is no different than if he were to go out and attack Lance Armstrong for obtaining chemotherapy treatment for cancer. Both clinical depression (not all depression) and cancer have physiological causes.

Clinical depression is caused by a dearth of seratonin in the synapses of the brain. Anti-depressants, such as Paxil and Prozac, help restore the seratonin.

[Cecily]

"You should be a little more responsible, Matt ...."

This from a brain-dead, brainwashed cult member! Tom is so stupid he doesn't realize he's stupid. Matt should have told him where to get off, and suggested that Tom needed deprogramming in the worst way.

[Chuzzlewit]

all Scientologists are lock step on this issue of psychiatry and drugs...... I know many of them... you can't discuss it with them, because they only know a few rote lines to throw at you and then they are done.... they stop discussing it.

[hispanichoosier]

He says psychiatry is a pseudo science and of course it is.

Do you really mean psychology? A psychiatrist is a medical doctor.

Secondly, he correctly noted that psychotropic drugs are over abused masking the true problem. I totally agree....

If a person has obsessive-compulsive disorder or clinical depression--both caused by a dearth of seratonin in the brain's synapses--then how else would such a physiological problem be treated? In many mental diseases, medical treatment is the only answer.

[Conservative Texan Mom]

They need to debug him and get rid of that name repeating glitch! Very annoying!

[AmericanChef]

What a flake! 'Course, psychology & the lot is a dangerous thing to Scientologists - deprogramming them requires a bit of professional psuedo science to remove the psuedo religion from your loved one's head.

[cousair]

I sure hope so and I agree with your right on assessment of him!!

[BlackRain]

This is America and believed are entitled to believe what the want.

But, don't fool yourself by thinking that Scientology is anything other than a cult.

How many religions do you know that have a Navy? They do -- it is called Sea Org.

For more information -- Check out www.xenu.net

[Odyssey-x]

I am a sci-fi junky but I am never going to watch another tom cruise movie again. Scientology is a cult that intentionally turns people into money grubbing sociopaths to further its purposes. It is also based on horribly bad science fiction.

[BlackRain]

"Your Friendly Neighbourhood Scientologist Revealed!

William Burroughs was a member, John Travolta still is and Nicole Kidman would rather not discuss Tom Cruise's invovement. Scientology was founded by sci-fi hack L. Ron Hubbard not long after he said that, "If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion."

Its doctrine contains stories about clams and space aliens named Xenu and the cult's props include funky alfoil hats and mind reading machines made of tin cans. Whilst there are plenty of cults out there to ridicule, Scientology is streets ahead because of its patent nuttiness, trensparent money-grabbing and appallingly aggressive (and generally ineffectual) attempts at suppressing criticism. For sheer entertainment value and ever increasing heights of absurdity, Scientology wins every time.

The Church of Scientology professes a 'religion' which consists of a bizarre mishmash of dangerously pseudo-scientific psychotherapy, rampant paranoia, technocratic jargon and third rate science fiction.

Their key beliefs stem from L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics, which proposes that psychological trauma is located within the body in the form of 'engrams' carried by 'thetans' - little demon things that reside within your body and carry the pain of past lives. As they feed off trauma, they encourage their host to undergo traumatic experiences, thus establishing that someone hosting body thetans (and that's everyone bar the most 'advanced' Scientologists) cannot be relied upon to accurately judge what's best for themselves.

My personal favourite example of thetan effects is Hubbard's clam story. Humans are, in Hubbard's cosmology, directly descended from sand clams that lived along surf-pounded shore lines and because of the action of waves, these clams were caught in a constant dilemma - they did not know whether they should open or close themselves, depending on whether they were under or out of the water.

Body thetans in the clams fed off this trauma and now reside in human beings where they continue to inflict their painful memories on their hosts such that someone who mimics the action of the clam with their hands is able to invoke the body thetans in another person who will experience a pain in their jaw.

Got that? Snap your fingers at someone and nasty demons give them a sore throat. The same applies to the trauma your thetans feed off in the lives of their previous human hosts. Chances are you're bearing the anguish of drug addiction and incest whether you know it or not.

Oh, and did I mention that body thetans are actually the souls of space aliens that were exiled to earth around 76 million years ago by galactic overlord Xenu where they were locked in volcanoes and forced to watch confusing movies for 36 hours before being blasted apart by nuclear bombs? L. Ron said so, anyway.

The key to Scientology is not their beliefs, though, but rather the system of induction and conditioning of recruits that propels the 'raw meat' into total dependence on the Scientology organisation and makes them willing to devote every skerrick of time and money they command to the service of Scientology.

In order to free oneself from the aforementioned thetan influence one must undergo 'Clearing Operations' that purge one of body thetans and their persuasive ways. Like most other Scientology techniques, this is a justification that encourages subjects to submit to a series of brainwashing techniques that impede critical thinking and normative socialistaion (and needless to say, the Chruch of Scienotlogy charges thousands of dollars for these services).

Still, according to Scientology's doctrines, the pursuit of clearing will allow one to become a 'free thetan' with superhuman powers that include foreseeing the future, telekinesis and whatever else Hubbard's drug-addled brain dreamt up. Giving away your time, money and sanity could sell be worth it after all.

Their initial selling routine isn't as nutty as this, though. If you've ever come across a Scientologist (their Perth 'org' (office) is on Murray Street and has a new-agey landscape painting on the front), you'll have come across the 'free personality test' which - surprise, surprise - will identify an area of your personality where you'll need to conduct some self improvement work, which (you guessed it) is offered in the form of courses conducted by the Church of Scientology (for a fee).

During this process you'll be subjected to a range of interrogation techniques such as being left in small rooms for long periods of time whilst test results are processed. Needless to say, the course that's offered is just the start of a lifetime of courses and psychological 'Operations' that Scientology will attempt to convince you that you desperately need.

Their costs rise incrementally into the tens of thousands and if you don't have the cash, you can always dedicate every waking hour of your life to unpaid work for the organisation in return for these services.

Because it's a cult that thrives on the complete submission of its members to the organisation's demands, Scientologists live in a strange world of their own and follow the 'scientifically' determined pronouncements of L. Ron Hubbard that provide the 'correct' response in any given situation.

Indeed, these responses are conditioned into the subject in 'drills.' Besides the destruction of rational thought processes this involves, the conditiones responses are often nonsensical and even contradictory, which produces people unable to function normally or communicate coherently - the twisted jargon and confused syntax of the committed Scientologist has to be experienced to be believed. A quick chat with a Scientology spokesperson is an exercise in severe weirdness the moment you move away from the topics they've been prepared to discuss.

There's a wealth of material on Scientology on the web, largely in protest against the cult's attempt to suppress criticism and control the circulation of Scientology's 'teachings.'

The weird science fiction parts of Scientology (such as the Xenu story) are regarded as confidential by the cult, which has attempted to enforce the secrecy of these documents through copyright law and their classification as trade secrets (and you thought they were a religion?

Well, that's what they tell the tax office). The cult justifies their secrecy by asserting that exposure to knowledge of these materials - if not conducted under controlled conditions (and accompanied by appropriate payment) - will result in a backlash staged by body thetans that results in incurable insomnia leading to drug addiction and death.

If you read the third paragraph of this article, I guess you're in trouble. Perhaps more alarmingly, Scientology documents condone the suppression of dissent by and means necessary and assert that the best means of defense is attack through smear campaigns and by levelling allegations of criminality at their critics, who this extremely paranoid organisation says are part of a conspiracy of psychiatrists, communists, nazis and financiers.

Scientology may well have begun as a cynical money-making exercise on behalf of Hubbard, but as its number swelled and its devotion to its founder increased, Hubbard's tenuous grip on reality completely slipped and he created an organisation that mirrored his seemingly schizoid and paranoiac persona.

The vehemence of its attacks of critics, immense wealth and effectiveness of its induction techniques has produced an organisation that survived the death of its founder, held together as it was by distrust of the outside world which Scientologists are left unable to cope with.

The organisation may be gradually shrinking and has been slowly ossifying since Hubbard's death, but nonetheless stands as a testament to the power of social control techniques. The extremity of Scientology's control strategies may be unusual, but it does provide a case that's perhaps only a more visible example of the tactics employed by more accepted groups such as the armed forces who are equally keen to fashion raw recruits into dedicated cadre. And worst of all, they're not even as amusing as Scinetology." Source: http://www.raids.org/gen00193.htm

[Porterville]

I thought psycologist often cross into psychiatry and give out drugs like candy?

[KevinDavis]

I deem this movie worth watching on cable only...

[TXBSAFH]

I hate remakes, grow some original ideas Hollyweird. I will skip it altogether.

[Porterville]

My grandmother had a degenerative mental disease and I noted years ago that physical activity made her a lot sharper than drugs and a closet at the old folks home.

It also doesn't take a genius to recognize that mind stimulating activities including fine arts, sports, and even charity, help to relieve the symptoms. These drugs are way over used.

But hey, it's an industry, who am I to deny and industries eminent domain over the human condition or property for that matter.

[KevinDavis]

I saw the orginal one and I thought about it seeing the new version, but I have decided until it comes out on cable..