Psychiatry behind the holocaust. Seriously?

The Church of Scientology - spiritually grounded religion or money sucking cult? As an open minded athiest living outside the great ol' US or A it doesn't really affect me. However, the rapid proliferation of religion, new religions which have a mantle of cultishness and are highly publicised through affiliation with world-famous followers, requires some attention and some thought. So my question is this: is there substance to Scientology?

The 'Citizens Commisson on Human Rights' is a division of the 'Church' which positions itself as a "nonprofit mental health watchdog". The CCHR set up a museum in Hollwood in 2005 with the title of the exhibition: Psychiatry: An Industry of Death. The amazing thing is that the museum makes the claim that psychiatry is responsible for the Holocaust. See the link to the tour of the museum (see here). Here is the page from wikipedia (see here).

So I'm happy to be open minded but this all sounds stupid. In life, if someone wants to be taken seriously, they act seriously. Dedicating a museum to the theme that psychiatry caused the holocaust is stupid. I am left with one opinion of Scientology.

I prefer the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (see here).

To anyone interested, here is a link to Anonymous, the Scientology protest group (see here). For the record, I'm not a member or an active protester. I just think that Scientology is stupid and potentially harmful - in many many ways.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on flow

Great insight. Understand. Bring this into your life. Once you have watched this, watch Martin Seligman (see here).

New Scientist uses neuromarketing

I have talked about neuromarketing before (see here). New Scientist, the fantastic international (British) magazine that shares news stories from the world of science, recently undertook its own neuromarketing experiment. They took three options for covers for a single issue, hooked up 19 customers to an EEG machine and asked which cover was the best. They went with the winner and the result was a 12% rise in sales (see here). Here is an article from the NY Times that describes the 'experiment' in more detail (see here). While there is a definite element of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle at play - there is no control in the real world for comparison - it is another case in point where the application of neuromarketing has yielded an increase in sales.

Musical intervention

Scientists at Glasgow Caledonian University are using a mixture of psychology and audio engineering to see how music can prompt certain responses. See here. Emotions and moods can be influenced by outside forces. This study aims to identify the components that influence specific responses. One application will be to compile personalised packages of musical components to help improve people's wellbeing.

There's nothing new about music therapy. This study is the first to try and model specific components to specific responses. The commercial applications will also be interesting. The retail environment could capitalise on the research to influence shoppers' buying decisions or define new ways of communicating brand empathy. It could also form part of the optimisation of advertisements and assessed by neuromarketing techniques. The opportunities are endless.

I have spoken about the use of scents in influencing human behaviour (see here). Now music.