Tom Cruise Vindicated?

 

A new metastudy from the UK finds no evidence that depression is caused by low serotonin levels--the theory on which it has been treated since about 1980. The theory over 80% of us still believe with a religious fervor.

“The main areas of serotonin research provide no consistent evidence of there being an association between serotonin and depression, and no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.”

Prozac and all the SSRIs work as placebos. The dirty secret nobody wants to point out is that placebos do work.

But the “chemical imbalance” line was always a con. Michael Knowles pointedly wonders how Tom Cruise, an actor, knew all this years ago. 

It should have been obvious to any thinking person all along that it was no explanation at all. If chemical balance causes depression, what caused the chemical imbalance? If depression is associated with low serotonin levels in the brain, which is cause, and which effect?

If he hadn’t figured it out for himself, Cruise knew this because he was a Scientologist. Scientology has been calling out psychiatry on this for decades. 

Scientology has been dismissed everywhere as a dangerous cult; but Leonard Cohen, no less, although he did not himself become a scientologist, is on record as saying that they had the real deal. Dangerous, perhaps—but to whom? They might have been unjustly tarred because they were telling inconvenient truths, the way the powers that be now tar any dissent as “racist,” “white supremacist,” or “alt-right.” When someone or something is too generally and broadly condemned, we have a right to be suspicious. Remember Goldstein and the two-minute hate.

The “chemical imbalance” line worked because it was something people wanted to believe. It was a placebo, like the pills themselves. First, it offered a simple cure—just take a pill. Second, it sounded suitably materialistic and amoral, and so “scientific.” Third, it absolved everyone from blame.

It has always been a popular idea, long predating science. It is the theory of the humours: mental problems are/were caused by some imbalance of fluids in the brain. They were restored to balance by drawing bad blood, giving enemas, or cutting a hole in the skull to let the vapours out. SSRI pills supposedly work the same way.

And pills worked because we are conditioned to believe in pills. They seem properly medical and scientific, and science is our religion. The proper cure for spiritual distress, aka “mental illness,” is always faith healing. That is to say, faith.

This is why people cling to their preferred psychological theory with a fervour only seen elsewhere in religion; and not indeed in religion since perhaps the 18th century. It is as though denying another’s psychological faith, whether it is in “chemical imbalance,” the Freudian subconscious, Jung, or Abraham Maslow, puts one at risk of auto da fe and then eternal hellfire. Perhaps you, like I, have repeatedly seen this.

L. Ron Hubbard, being a science fiction novelist, understood the imagination and the willing suspension of disbelief. He understood faith healing. Cohen, as a poet and songwriter, recognized the insight. Scientology tends to appeal to artists and actors generally. They see that imagination is the key, and Hubbard and Scientology have worked out a satisfying cosmology—far more complete and satisfying than the barren cosmology of conventional science, although Hubbard is shrewd enough to claim a scientific basis. We are conditioned to worship science.

Still, when it comes to truly combatting mental illness, neither pills nor a consciously constructed fantasy world can really compete with actual faith. And Hubbard omits the essential moral dimension.

Cohen ultimately found that Judaism worked better. Like the other universalist faiths, it has a complete and coherent account of human experience, and includes the moral imperative.

And that is what is needed to cure mental illness. Mental illness comes from a loss of meaning.