sptimes articles from Friday, Feb 21
BlackPR
HUBBARD WAS LONGTIME OPPONENT OF PSYCHIATRY
St. Petersburg Times
FRIDAY February 21, 1997
By: THOMAS C. TOBIN
CLEARWATER - When Lisa McPherson's fellow Scientologists objected to her
receiving psychiatric treatment at Morton Plant Hospital, they were
following long-held convictions that began with Church of Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The roots of Scientology's opposition to psychiatry date to 1950, one
month after Hubbard published Dianetics, a self-help book that provided
the
basis for the Scientology religion, which Hubbard launched in 1954.
According to Scientology literature, psychiatrists "on government
payrolls" were calling Dianetics a hoax even though they hadn't read it.
The church contends these critics were concerned that psychiatrists would
lose millions of dollars in government money when people realized that
Dianetics could solve their mental and emotional problems "for only the
price of a book."
At the same time, church critics have charged that Scientology's war
against psychiatry is a tactic to create a market for its services.
In 1969, Scientology launched the Citizens Commission on Human Rights,
whose mission is to "expose and eradicate criminal acts and human rights
abuses by psychiatry."
In 1974, Hubbard unveiled the Introspection Rundown, a method for curing
people who had suffered a "psychotic break." He hailed it as a
breakthrough that meant there was no further need for psychiatry.
Throughout the years, Scientology's opposition to psychiatry and its
close cousin, psychology, has taken many forms - from a 1993 protest
outside a psychiatric building at Morton Plant Hospital to a recently
published series of booklets on "psychiatric abuse."
Hubbard wrote that Scientology offered a better way to deal with life's
pain and make people happier. It's an "applied religious philosophy" that
teaches a person is a spiritual being called a thetan, which inhabits a
body and lives on when that body dies.
Scientologists also believe a thetan's mind has a "reactive" or
subconscious side that stores mental images and is not under a person's
control. Through spiritual counseling called "auditing," Scientologists
believe they can solve personal problems by locating these images and
addressing them.
The concept of using past experience to address current problems also is
found in psychotherapy.
Consider the description offered in the American Medical Association's
Family Medical Guide, which says: Psychotherapy helps "the patient recall
memories buried deep in the subconscious mind. Once the root causes of a
problem are recollected and understood, the patient may be able to change
long-standing but unhealthy patterns of thought and behavior.''
Scientology would be repulsed by such a comparison. Many of its
publications contain images of people hooked to antique electric shock
machines and crazed victims of alleged psychiatric crimes.
The church often links electric shock and lobotomies with the more
mainstream practice of using psychotropic drugs to stabilize mood swings.
It particularly objects to the "psychiatric theories that man is a mere
animal" with no soul or spirit.
Melvin Sabshin, medical director for the American Psychiatric
Association, said: "I've never seen such theories in psychiatry and I've
been around for a long time. The profession certainly sees man at a
different level . . . enormously different from anything in animal life."
He also said lobotomies were a product of the 1940s and '50s and are
"almost never done today." He called the lobotomy a "desperate"
treatment that "was not done well and was done by only a few people."
He said electric shock was used in the 1940s and today is used only
rarely in a much milder form.
Psychotropic drugs, he said, "are a very large part of what we do
now."
By comparing those drugs with electric shock and lobotomies, and by
exaggerating the extent to which the latter two are used, Scientologists
do
the public a disservice, Sabshin said.
"IALL Pre-screened sites-Triple AAA rated-Includes Pla 1
Hud Nordin
In article <19970223154...@ladder02.news.aol.com> bla...@aol.com (BlackPR) writes:
>HUBBARD WAS LONGTIME OPPONENT OF PSYCHIATRY
>St. Petersburg Times
>FRIDAY February 21, 1997
>By: THOMAS C. TOBIN
>
>CLEARWATER - When Lisa McPherson's fellow Scientologists objected to her
>receiving psychiatric treatment at Morton Plant Hospital, they were
>following long-held convictions that began with Church of Scientology
>founder L. Ron Hubbard.
>
>
>Psychotropic drugs, he said, "are a very large part of what we do now."
>By comparing those drugs with electric shock and lobotomies, and by
>exaggerating the extent to which the latter two are used, Scientologists
>do the public a disservice, Sabshin said.
>
>"IALL Pre-screened sites-Triple AAA rated-Includes Pla 1
Your article has a bad case of AOL rot. It's been happening to large
articles from AOL all over Usenet for the last week or two.
--
Hud Nordin <h...@netcom.com> Silicon Valley / The City of Sunnyvale / California
Tilman Hausherr
Here it is, he/she sent it to me.
SCIENTOLOGY HAD WOMAN IN ISOLATION
St. Petersburg Times
FRIDAY February 21, 1997
By: THOMAS C. TOBIN
CLEARWATER - In the days leading up to her unexplained death, a 36-year-old
member of the Church of Scientology was being kept in isolation at the
church's Clearwater headquarters and had started banging her fists against
the wall, a Scientology lawyer now says.
Lisa McPherson was kept "from the secular world" by her own choice
after an emotional breakdown left her wandering naked near downtown
Clearwater, said Elliot Abelson, a Scientology lawyer based in Los Angeles.
During her isolation, he said, McPherson entered "kind of a
self-destructive mode."
Abelson and other Scientology representatives insist McPherson was
well-cared for at the Fort Harrison Hotel. They say the church's attention
was supportive and benign.
For 17 days, Abelson said, McPherson stayed in a "very nice hotel
room," without a television but with access to room service and the
freedom to come and go.
But as authorities press their investigation into how McPherson died and
who was responsible, McPherson's family and some critics of Scientology are
alleging that McPherson probably was not free to leave.
They are pointing to a treatment that the late church founder, L. Ron
Hubbard, prescribed for those who suffered a "psychotic break." The
treatment involves isolating people, against their will if necessary.
Scientology calls it the "Introspection Rundown."
In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, McPherson's estate accused the church of
allowing McPherson to languish in a coma without nutrition and liquids
while she was in isolation as part of an Introspection Rundown.
Separately, some church critics, including former Scientology staffers
who say they witnessed forced isolation while with the church, suggest that
a poorly performed Introspection Rundown could have contributed to
McPherson's death.
According to Abelson, McPherson did not receive an Introspection Rundown
during her period of isolation.
When Hubbard unveiled the Introspection Rundown in 1974, he said it
would enable Scientology "to take over mental therapy in full." It was
one more volley in Scientology's long-standing war against conventional
psychiatry. (See related story)
"If society wants insanity handled as a social problem," Hubbard wrote
in 1969, "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."
+++
"I need help. I need to talk to someone," McPherson told paramedics
after taking off her clothes at the scene of a minor traffic accident on
Nov. 18, 1995. Her comments were recorded in an Emergency Medical Services
report obtained recently by the Times.
The paramedics also remembered her saying she was "having a difficult
time" and had been "doing bad things in her mind and doing wrong things
that she didn't know were wrong."
They took her to nearby Morton Plant Hospital.
Within an hour of her arrival, fellow members of the Church of
Scientology, including a church liaison, were at her bedside. A
Scientologist friend told the staff it was against McPherson's religion to
be admitted for psychiatric treatment.
An hour later, a doctor relented and discharged her into their hands
"for follow-up care."
The Scientologists, according to hospital records, told the doctor they
would care for McPherson and watch her 24 hours a day. Therecords also note
that McPherson, with Scientologists still at her bedside, said: "I want to
go home with my friends from the congregation. I won't do anything to harm
myself."
McPherson was a parishioner who had spent tens of thousands of dollars
on Scientology counseling over the years. She was not among the hundreds of
Clearwater staff members who serve the church.
Asked why church representatives took such an interest in a
parishioner's hospitalization, Abelson said: "The church would immediately
go to help because that's the kind of church it is."
Emotionally frazzled but physically healthy, McPherson entered the
centerpiece of Scientology's world spiritual headquarters in Clearwater:
the Fort Harrison Hotel.
Seventeen days later, on a Tuesday, McPherson suddenly fell ill,
according to church officials. That night, they say, she was placed in the
back seat of a Scientology van and taken to Columbia New Port Richey
Hospital, which is 24 miles from the hotel's front door.
Why not go to a closer hospital?
Church officials say no one realized it was an emergency.
They say McPherson distrusted doctors and was reluctant to get help.
They say they finally convinced her to see Dr. David I. Minkoff, a
Scientologist who is on staff at the New Port Richey hospital.
Abelson confirmed that one of McPherson's two companions in the van was
Scientology medical liaison Janis Johnson, a medical doctor who is not
licensed in Florida.
When the van arrived at the hospital shortly after 9 p.m., McPherson was
dead. Minkoff, who pronounced her dead after 21 minutes of resuscitation
efforts, did not respond to an interview request.
An autopsy conducted the next morning by the Pinellas-Pasco Medical
Examiner's Office concluded the cause of death was blood clotting brought
on by "bed rest and severe dehydration."
Last month, Medical Examiner Joan Wood said publicly that test results
showed McPherson had no liquids for five to 10 days and was unconscious for
one or two days before her death. She also said McPherson had suffered
insect bites, apparently from cockroaches. Through her lawyer, Wood said
she spoke out because she felt the church was lying about the circumstances
surrounding McPherson's death.
The church disputes Wood's findings and is suing her office for access
to records in the case, including samples of tissue and blood from
McPherson's body. Abelson, the Scientology lawyer, hotly disputed Wood's
conclusions, calling her a "hateful liar."
McPherson's relatives and friends in her native Dallas, where she joined
the church as an 18-year-old, have said they suspect she was detained after
voicing intentions to leave Scientology.
Church officials say McPherson was active in church affairs and had no
intention of leaving. "Lisa loved the Church of Scientology and the church
loved her," they said in a statement this week.
They also say her fellow Scientologists did everything they could for
her after she suffered a sudden and severe staph infection the day of her
death. The infection is noted on hospital reports.
"This is not a "Who Done It?' It's not a mystery," Abelson said
recently. "It's all done. Case closed."
+++
Among the 60- million words Hubbard reportedly published arehis
step-by-step instructions for handling someone who suffers a severe
emotional upheaval or "psychotic break."
Hubbard unveiled his Introspection Rundown in January 1974, saying it
"possibly ranks with the major discoveries of the Twentieth Century. . . .
This means the last reason to have psychiatry around is gone."
The first step in the Introspection Rundown is to "isolate the person
wholly" Hubbard wrote.
A month later, he wrote another document that explained the isolation of
subjects was necessary to "destimulate and protect them and others from
possible damage."
Between sessions where the subject receives Scientology counseling
called "auditing," Hubbard instructed: "No one speaks to the person or
in his hearing."
He wrote that the purpose of the Introspection Rundown "is to locate
and correct those things which cause a person to fixate his attention
inwardly." He said the process "extroverts a person so that he can see
his environment and therefore handle and control it."
A supervisor would decide whether the isolation should continue, and
could communicate with the isolated person only in writing, Hubbard wrote.
When a supervisor decides the person still is not cured, the isolation
continues.
"This will elicit a protest from the person," Hubbard predicted.
Part of the Introspection Rundown involves a Scientology concept known
as "havingness." Since her death, McPherson's relatives have released
copies of her "parishioner statement" from the Church of Scientology,
which shows a $240 charge for tapes entitled "Expansion of Havingness."
The charge was dated Nov. 30 1995, which was five days before McPherson's
death while she was at the Fort Harrison.
Abelson said the invoice doesn't prove she received the Introspection
Rundown. Rather, he said, "it's evidence that she got billed for
something."
Abelson insisted McPherson did not receive the Introspection Rundown or
any other church services.
Nevertheless, the treatment is getting big play on the Internet, where
Scientology critics were among the first to suggest its possible
implications in the McPherson case.
The Introspection Rundown also is advertised on the church's Internet
site as one of several Scientology procedures for which church counselors
can get training.
Stacy Young, a former Scientologist living in Seattle, said in an
interview with the Times that she acted as a guard during an Introspection
Rundown in 1988.
The subject, a fellow Scientologist, was a woman who thought she was a
butterfly and a dog, Young said. She was kept for two months in a shack
with a bare mattress and dirt floors in a Scientology compound east of Los
Angeles, Young said.
"She was basically a prisoner," Young said. "We never said a word. We
just sat there with her and watched her chirp and bark and be crazy. . . .
She was very much at our mercy."
The woman eventually was released to her parents, said Young, whose
husband, Vaughn Young, was a top church spokesman when the FBI raided
Scientology's Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., offices in 1977.
Vaughn Young said Scientology procedures such as the Introspection
Rundown can take days, weeks or months and amount to "practicing medicine
without a license," a comment that was echoed in the lawsuit by
McPherson's estate.
The Youngs say they now earn a living as writers and as witnesses
against Scientology in court.
Abelson responded to the couple's comments, saying: "That's all they do
and they will say anything or make up anything in order to, one: further
their nothing careers; and, two: because of their hate for the church . . .
anything the Youngs say to the church and to me are meaningless and
worthless."
Abelson said the couple was kicked out of Scientology. The Youngs say
they managed to escape and now endure harassment from the church's private
investigators.
Monica Pignotti, another former Scientologist who was an early member of
the church's Clearwater staff in the mid-1970s, said it was "a common
practice" to isolate people against their will.
Abelson responded, saying: "We've never said that we were not isolating
(McPherson). She was isolated." But he added she wanted to be isolated
"from the secular world" so she could rest.
He said church staffers interviewed by Clearwater police could not
recall McPherson saying she wanted to leave.
+++
For the founder of Scientology, it was no sin to hold people against
their will if they had too many negative emotions - or more pre-cisely, if
they fell below a certain point on the "tone scale."
In Scientology, the tone scale is a chart that assigns a number to
various emotional states, ranging from minus-40 for "total failure" to 40
for "serenity of beingness."
In between are apathy (.05), despair (.98), anxiety (1.02), pain (1.8),
exhilaration (8.0) and many more. In Scientology, the tone scale enables
someone to predict how another person will behave.
In his book Science of Survival, Hubbard wrote: "Any person from 2.0
down on the tone scale should not have, in any thinking society, any civil
rights of any kind." He reasoned that such a person cannot tell right from
wrong.
That applied even to people who have temporarily dipped below a 2.0
reading, he added. By Hubbard's standard, then, a person who slips into
despair or anger or anxiety, could be detained until that condition
subsided.
Where would Lisa McPherson have been on the tone scale?
The paramedics who took her to Morton Plant said she had a fixed stare
and was speaking in a monotone. She couldn't stay focused on one topic and
kept asking paramedics to repeat their questions. She said she needed help
and wanted to rest.
Later, at the Fort Harrison, McPherson was in a major spiritual hub for
Scientologists, with many of Hubbard's approaches and techniques at hand.
Abelson said she was ineligible to receive Scientology counseling there
because she was having trouble sleeping. Counseling cannot be done on a
person who has not had six to eight hours sleep, he said.
A person also must be stable to receive counseling, he said. Toward the
midpoint of her stay, Lisa McPherson began to pound on the walls of her
room, Abelson said. "It was kind of a self-destructive mode she was in."
Abelson said the wrongful-death lawsuit filed by McPherson's estate is
not based on facts and is being pushed by relatives who weren't close to
McPherson. Dell Liebreich, an aunt of McPherson's, is the estate's personal
representative. McPherson's mother, Fannie, died earlier this month after a
battle with cancer.
Abelson also accused Clearwater police of encouraging the lawsuit and
starting rumors about the Introspection Rundown on the Internet. Instead of
cyberspace, he said, a more apt name would be "hyperspace."
"I have really taken a hard look at what happened," he said. "What
you're getting on the Internet is opinion on what might have happened. It
was not done."
He did, however, acknowledge that the Introspection Rundown remains
"part of church services."
Asked whether the Introspection Rundown is an element of the
investigation, Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bernie McCabe would not
comment but volunteered another remark: "I have heard the term before."
Next month, some Scientology critics are planning a march in Clearwater
to protest Scientology's policies, including the Introspection Rundown.
They also plan a candlelight vigil in McPherson's memory.
+++
Lisa McPherson's final days
LISA McPHERSON had been a Church of Scientology member for 18 years when
she died Dec. 5, 1995, after a 17-day stay at the Fort Harrison Hotel in
Clearwater. She was 36. She joined the Church of Scientology in her native
Dallas, lived in Los Angeles for a time, returned to Dallas and came to
Clearwater in 1994 to work for AMC Publishing Inc., a business owned by
Scientologists. Two months before she died, McPherson achieved the state of
"clear," where a Scientologist no longer is influenced by undesireable
forces in the subconscious or "reactive mind." Following is a chronology
of events that preceded and followed her death. It was collected from
hospital records, public documents and interviews with McPherson's
relatives and Scientology officials,
EARLY NOVEMBER, 1995
About 10 days before Thanksgiving, Lisa McPherson calls a childhood friend
to say she is coming home to Dallas for good. McPherson confides that she
has much to say, but not over the phone. She wants to know if the friend is
angry with her for not keeping in touch more since she joined Scientology.
In a separate conversation with her mother, she says she is under heavy
pressure at work and "letting people down."
NOV. 18:
5:55 p.m.
McPherson snaps after becoming involved in a minor auto accident on S Fort
Harrison Avenue in Clearwater. She disrobes and tells paramedics: "I need
help. I need to talk to someone." She says she has been doing "wrong
things she didn't know were wrong." She identifies herself as a
Scientologist.
6:38 p.m.
She arrives in an EMS unit at Morton Plant Hospital.
6:50 p.m.
A Scientologist friend arrives and tells doctors it is against McPherson's
religion for her to see a psychiatrist. But Dr. Flynn Lovett insists that
she undergo a psychiatric evaluation before he can make a decision on her
status.
7:30 p.m.
Another Scientologist, a liaison from the Church of Scientology, is present
at McPherson's bed.
8:15 p.m.
Lisa McPherson tells Joseph Price, a psychiatric nurse, that she took off
her clothes "for attention. I didn't want to be arrested." He notes that
McPherson wants to go home with her "friends from the congregation," who
are at her bedside. She has a fixed stare, speaks in a monotone and is
teary-eyed. She insists she doesn't want to hurt herself.
8:20 p.m.
Dr. Lovett decides to release McPherson to the church liaison "for
follow-up care." She signs herself out against the advice of Lovett, who
says McPherson is suffering from "behavioral dysfunction" but he can find
"no evidence of acute medical problem or injury." He concludes she can
make a rational decision. Lovett writes that McPherson's "friends at
Scientology will watch her 24 hours a day and be sure that she gets the
care that they want her to have and the patient wants to have."
8:40 p.m.
McPherson is discharged from Morton Plant. Church officials say she checked
into the Fort Harrison Hotel for rest and relaxation, and stayed for 17
days.
DEC. 5
9:30 p.m.
McPherson arrives at Columbia New Port Richey Hospital, which is 24 miles
from the Fort Harrison Hotel - about a 35 minute drive. She is in the back
seat of a Scientology van, accompanied by two people, including Janis
Johnson, Scientology's medical liaison officer. Johnson is a medical doctor
but is not licensed to practice in Florida. McPherson has no pulse and is
not breathing. A nurse later tells police "she was dead" when she
arrived. Emergency room personnel begin CPR.
9:51 p.m.
Dr. David Minkoff, a Scientologist on staff at the hospital, pronounces
McPherson dead. A follow-up report states her Scientologist escorts said
she "stopped breathing just as they arrived"" at the emergency room. They
said they took her to the hospital after she became lethargic "some time
today and tonight."
DEC. 6
Clearwater police begin an investigation, which is later joined by the
Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Office and the Florida Department of Law
Enforcement.
DEC. 8
8:08 a.m.
An analysis is completed of blood taken from McPherson's body while at the
New Port Richey hospital. It points to the presence of a staph infection.
Scientology officials later insist that the staph infection led to the
blood clotting that caused McPherson's death.
CAPTION:
COLOR PHOTO; BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO; BLACK AND WHITE MAP; BLACK AND WHITE
CHART
Lisa McPherson; Lisa McPherson; locates key sites in the death of Lisa
McPherson - Fort Harrison Hotel, Morton Plant Hospital and the accident
site at S. Ft. Harrison Ave. and Belleview Blvd.; chronology of McPherson's
final days
HUBBARD WAS LONGTIME OPPONENT OF PSYCHIATRY
St. Petersburg Times
FRIDAY February 21, 1997
By: THOMAS C. TOBIN
CLEARWATER - When Lisa McPherson's fellow Scientologists objected to her
receiving psychiatric treatment at Morton Plant Hospital, they were
following long-held convictions that began with Church of Scientology
founder L. Ron Hubbard.
The roots of Scientology's opposition to psychiatry date to 1950, one
Psychotropic drugs, he said, "are a very large part of what we do
now."
By comparing those drugs with electric shock and lobotomies, and by
exaggerating the extent to which the latter two are used, Scientologists do
the public a disservice, Sabshin said.
"It browbeats and frightens people," he said. "Everything
(Scientologists) do is maybe two-fifths truth, not quite half-truth."
Today in psychiatry, "the results are benign and helpful" 99 percent
of the time, and 70 percent of patients get better, Sabshin said.
Scientology cites its own statistics. It says it has saved 400,000
people from electric shock treatments and 20,000 people from lobotomies.
Tilman Hausherr
In <331dca7d...@news.snafu.de>, til...@xenu.com (Tilman Hausherr)
wrote:
>Abelson also accused Clearwater police of encouraging the lawsuit and
>starting rumors about the Introspection Rundown on the Internet. Instead of
>cyberspace, he said, a more apt name would be "hyperspace."
Liar. Internetters, including me, sent the cops copies of the
introspection rundown.
>Next month, some Scientology critics are planning a march in Clearwater
>to protest Scientology's policies, including the Introspection Rundown.
>They also plan a candlelight vigil in McPherson's memory.
Scientologists will come with giant fans.
Steve A
On Mon, 24 Feb 1997 07:39:14 GMT, til...@xenu.com (Tilman Hausherr)
wrote:
> In <331dca7d...@news.snafu.de>, til...@xenu.com (Tilman Hausherr)
> wrote:
>
> >Abelson also accused Clearwater police of encouraging the lawsuit and
> >starting rumors about the Introspection Rundown on the Internet. Instead of
> >cyberspace, he said, a more apt name would be "hyperspace."
>
> Liar. Internetters, including me, sent the cops copies of the
> introspection rundown.
>
> >Next month, some Scientology critics are planning a march in Clearwater
> >to protest Scientology's policies, including the Introspection Rundown.
> >They also plan a candlelight vigil in McPherson's memory.
>
> Scientologists will come with giant fans.
...and then accuse protesters of being a lynch mob, come to burn down
the Fort Harrison. I can see it now: "Internet Mob March On Church
Headquarters Bearing Firebrands"
--
Steve A, SP4, GGBC, KBM, Unsalvageable PTS/SP #12
ObDenial: I am not Arthur Stevens of Crawley.
ObURLS: Beginners: http://www.tiac.net/users/modemac/cos.html
In-depth: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/scientology/home.html
Suspicious Death: http://www.primenet.com/~cultxpt/lisa.htm
The Other Side: http://www.scientology.org
Child molesters! Join Scientology and grope with impunity! Why?
Donald Strawn raped a 13 year old girl, and attempted to rape
her 12 year old sister. The "Church" of Scientology in Clear-
water attempted to blackmail the girls' mother into silence.
Freimann/Gefecht
One thing is very obvious: Scientology doesn't have many friends among St.
Petersburg Times' editorial staff.
Bad infiltration work, clams!
Betti
--
Freimann/Gefecht
Partisan Project
Willkommen in der Realitaet -- Welcome to Reality