Lobotomobiles

I found myself tonight on Harvard Square wandering aimlessly in search of merriment, when a portly gentleman, as if having read my thoughts, lured me in with an irresistible pitch about the free exhibit downstairs, of dire import, he said, and did I mention free.

So I tripped down the charming brick staircase into a room the shape of the infinity symbol. Its walls were plastered with warnings about psychiatry's grip of terror through the centuries. There you could read reports on or watch mini-documentaries about eugenics, BF Skinner's preference for books over his own children, Frances Farmer, Bedlam and the infamous Walter Freeman, who rode around performing ice pick lobotomies in the name of "healing" in his "Lobotomobile"--with, I imagine, a fiendish ADAM WEST at the helm.

It was interesting enough. And perhaps people are over-medicated these days--though I hardly think psychiatry has been responsible for the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Sylvia Plath, or the hardships endured by Soviet Russians.

When I got to the end of the whole awful timeline, I noticed a solitary chair in front of a screen titled, "WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT."

And I wondered, what CAN I do about it? I went closer. Pressed play.

Well, then I realized just how badly I had been duped. I had just spent 45 minutes of a perfectly cool, crisp evening locked into an exhibit sponsored by the "Citizens' Commission on Human Rights." Which was founded in 1969 by the CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY. Dunh dunh dunnnnnnnh.

That's right. The same people that gave you TOM CRUISE, DIANETICS and BATTLEFIELD EARTH.

L. Ron Hubbard. Voice of reason and justice in America.

Anyway, visit it here and decide for yourself.
http://www.cchr.org/about_cchr/

But be on the lookout for subliminal messages and aliens who resemble John Travolta.



If you want a free copy of "Psychiatry: An Industry of Death," by the way, straight from Harvard Square, I got a free one with my lobotomy at the door.