A Couch Tom Cruise Won’t Jump On

…”You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”

Cruise looked like a man possessed — or at least in need of an Ativan — leaning insistently forward in his chair, hammering Lauer when the host suggested that some people were actually, you know, helped when doctors prescribed psychiatric drugs. Lauer sparred with Cruise specifically over whether it made sense for Brooke Shields to have sought therapy and taken antidepressants for postpartum depression — a decision that Cruise had previously criticized.

…As a top-level celebrity believer in Scientology, Cruise has been steeped in the lingo and policies of the late church founder, L. Ron Hubbard. (Hearing Cruise use a term like “ideal scene” during his exchange with Lauer would perk up the ears of anyone who’s been in Scientology’s orbit before.)

Hubbard launched his self-help movement in the 1950s with a book called “Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health,” and from early on, he battled with psychologists and psychiatrists. Indeed, Hubbard once wrote in an internal policy statement: “Our war has been forced to become to take over absolutely the field of mental healing on this planet in all forms.”

BTW, Katie Holmes has a Scientology minder who is following her as she promotes “Batman Begins”.

And Scarlett Johansson was turned down for a role in MI:3 after she doesn’t embrace the “religion”.

Way, way more in a related thread at Metafilter.

Ok.. I’m turning tabloid.