Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

The Manchurian Candidate / Chap. 14 p. 121
THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE
In my second year of high school I read extensively about the world's most modern
religion. I used both the school and the public library, and after extensive reading purposely
chose not to join. I speak here of the religion of psychiatry and its three major sects led by
the respective prophets named Freud, Adler and Jung. I eventually came to refer to these
men as Fraud, Addled and Junk.
It turned out, that in the dogma of psychiatry, my love of the outdoors, camping, fishing
and hunting and shooting, were all pronounced as symptoms of repressed homosexuality by
big city boys. My gun was an extension of my penis. Every shot I fired was a sublimation of
my sexual desire for men or boys, and for all I know maybe even male dogs.
Naturally, if you searched your soul and failed to find any such feelings, then you were
diagnosed as repressing and sublimating. Since I've always cared more about what I thought
than what anyone else thought about me, I could easily have swished out of the closet had I
been in one.
While the old established religions bore down on the ever popular sins of sex, greed,
gluttony, coveting and murder, this new one expounded a new sin: the sin of being mentally
sick to one degree or another. To this new religion piety got you nowhere. Everyone was a
sinner! I had a little problem with this belief because I felt 1 was being tarred with a very
broad brush wielded by big city boys who thought a trout was a used condom floating in the
Hudson River and believed a sucker was someone you sold the Brooklyn Bridge to.
So I rejected psychiatry, even though I learned a little of the psychiatric jargon. According
to many practitioners, everyone is swept by either the dust brush of neuroses, or by
the broom of madness; their basic tenet, of course, is that everyone needs their 50 minute
hour ministrations forever. After all, wouldn't we all want desperate customers willing to
pay us good money for a couple of hours a week
A few years ago I heard that magic and most descriptive term "psycho-babbler" which 1
have enjoyed using ever since. Just because I don't believe in the psycho-babbler's particular
dogma doesn't mean that I am unaware of mental illness, drug altered states and hypnosis.
Like most of us, 1 have become emotionally crazy at times. But, I have also had a few
periods, admittedly short, when I was completely sane. I feel I probably know more about
both states than the average bear.
I know enough about hypnotism to be absolutely sure that when some expert hypnosis
assures you that he can't induce you to do anything against your morals, nor make you do
anything you wouldn't ordinarily do, it's time to run like hell. That's simply not true!
1 firmly believe that each of us is capable of doing anything imaginable, given the
proper encouragement and setting. Hypnosis is the technique by which a subject's perception
and thinking processes are altered by suggestion alone. The stylish fads that periodically
ripple through society are examples of the inherent power of suggestion.
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene