The film One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest influenced many Scientologists to loathe and fear psychiatry, and was widely interpreted as psychiatry crushing non-conformity. Who can forget Chief Broom pretending to be dumb (meaning speechless) in order to be left alone, or the Jack Nicholson character punished (for attacking Nurse Ratchet for her cruelty) with a lobotomy? Scientology's reaction is that psychiatry is still as authoritarian and vicious as the movie depicts. But this essay looks at the book itself, and sees that a major theme is the mental anguish caused in every mental hospital character, by post-traumatic stress from war.

Ken Kesey’s Wars: “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest” at 50, by Nathaniel Rich, The Daily Beast, Jul 26, 2012, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... at-50.html

I don't know about the Scientologists, but I find this book extremely boring and far-fetched.

I have a family member with mental illness, so it's a painful journey for me to delve into a novelization of the mental illness experience, and the misery of the mentally ill fifty years ago. The book is not as dramatic and interesting as the movie, which won Best Picture, Actor, Actress , Director, and Screenplay. However, the movie ignored the book's war-caused PTSD for all the main characters playing patients, and thus its anti-war message. This means that however "great" the movie was, it was Hollywood-ized into heroes (non-conformist patients) and villains (satanic psychiatric nurses and administration), and war trauma was practically ignored. It was unfortunately accepted by many as truth rather than fiction. Worse, CoS still is ranting about electroshock as though it was done like in the 1950's without consent and with crude techniqes.

Scientologists are just lucky the story utilized electroshock, and it played into their hand. The same story in a different setting could have used castration or tongue mutilation, or poison or any debilitating method to break a man's stride. Truthfully electroshock has been misused, even intentionally by individuals. So there were very convenient horror stories for the guy who hated the psychological evaluations he himself had received and who also looked at the mental health industry as competitors in the market.

With a little retooling that movie could be remade. Only instead of a psychiatric institution it could be set at gold base in Hemet. Most swords do have two edges.

I took the easy way out and looked up Electrotherapy on the Internet. What came up first was of course, Wikipedia and they
were more extensive than usual. There are many therapeutic applications for usage of electric energy as a medical treatment and deep brain stimulation for neurological disease is but one of them. Makes E-meters look feeble in addition to being hopelessly outmoded and misapplied.

The thing is, like it or not, electricity is part of our biological makeup. I think electrotherapy has yet to really take off. And when it
does, look out! Scientology will just have to stay in a perma-retro-snit about it.

Some people have underlying depression AND are still reeling from trauma or war. Those people may need a mix of treatments, none of which is Scientology. There are encouraging results with strong magnetic treatments also helping depressed patients.* Medical progress marches on, leaving Scientology in the 1950's.

* http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 165836.htm

Back in the 70's when One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was out in theaters, I knew a guy who was the manager of a 6 screen movie-plex. He told me he (illegally) removed a few seconds of the electric shock sequence from the movie and gave it to the CoS Guardian's Office for them to use in their anti-psychiatry campaign. Yes, Keesey's book, and the subsequent movie did go pretty far in it's portrayal of evil nurse Ratched.