It's fun to watch celebrities go crazy!

[MarcO]

Check out Matt Lauer's interview with Tom Cruise from the Today Show this morning.

Join me in laughing out loud at a shrimpy high school drop out banging around with his zombie virgin fiancee and prattling on and on about the history of psychology as seen through his demented cult philosophies! Yes!!

[Drawbar]

I think Tom needs some downers. He looked a little stressed out up there.

[MarcO]

his mind vertically leaves his body at about the 7 minute mark, but beforehand it's still fun to listen to him ramble on about how in love he is while Katie Holmes grins as though her life depends on it in the dark distance.

[MarcO]

my God is it the weekend yet?!?!?

[paisley]

you people obviously don't understand psychology, not the way Tom Cruise understands psychology

poor girl who's marrying him, he seems pretty desperate and vain

[ggrtrhhrtgg]

interesting interview. Hard to believe that it ended up going in that sort of direction.... you don't usually see conflict on morning news.

[AdamH]

I'll tell you something. He may be a nutbar but Katie Holmes is stunning.

Once she converts to scientology her looks will decline. For now I find her smoking hot.

[Deeps]

I don't think he's completely off the mark with the criticisms he has for psychiatry and the prescription of anti depressants.

I think he is considerably innarticulate though in expressing his view point.

I think that there is likely a story behind his contempt for the institute and a personal pain he feels due to some "psychiatrically victimized" friend.

His Ex-Wife is obviously about as in touch with life as a glazed ham so maybe it stems from her escapism or maybe his own. Dunno.

His totalitarian approach to psych is a little off-putting. My belief is that at the crux of the job is one person in a room with another trying get a patient to face their problems head on and become a little more at peace as a result.

He seems only to want to focus on the negative aspects but, again I think this comes from a traumatic experience.

I've pretty much uttered the same things about friends I've seen go on anti-depressants. They glaze over....and sure they seem better, but I saw little in the way of sustainable healing.

I had a friend try to kick them and ended up in his words "feeling like [he] was on bad mushroom trip he couldn't escape and at a lot of points couldn't even really acknowledge until the 6 months passsed and it was over."

Spare me the "that's awesome" with regard to the 6 month mushroom feeling.

It took one look in his eyes and noticing the weight and zest for life he lost to realize this shit was not funny and he really could have fallen down a slippery slope that may have ended in suicide or perpetual dimensia.

It's pretty fucked up that this shit is prescribed hap-hazardly after all that we should have learned over the last century.

Deeps

Edited June 24, 2005 by Guest

[gentlemonkey]

I'll tell you something. He may be a nutbar but Katie Holmes is stunning.

Once she converts to scientology her looks will decline. For now I find her smoking hot.

yes, shes hot, but i find she always looks cracked out. Its that intense toothy smile.. shes hotter when shes doing the joey-smirk.

[bouche]

what's with this new MSN video enhanced thingy?

[bouche]

Tom Cruise didn't say ANYTHING that would make me think he was being open. Matt Loser made it sound like Tom was being OPEN. Tom kept just saying "It's all about the movie" anytime he was asked about his relationship and how it affects things.

Also, the editing of the interview was bullshit. Matt asked him about when he first experienced War of the Worlds and he started to talk about his childhood, and that experience, yet they moved on with bad editing.

This just makes Tom look bad.

[bouche]

wow. I posted that before I watched the rest.

Tom rocks. Why is the media trying to trip him up with talk of drugs and western therapy?

They're pushing him with his beliefs and I think his anti-drug thoughts towards healthy treatments is right on track.

[zero]

This guy is a total douchebag and is so hovering on the edge of total career meltdown. Even Speilberg has pulled out of upcoming junkets to promote his own mega spectacle because he's so tired of answering questions about Tomkat and Scientology. Where does this guy get off cutting off Matt Lauer for saying that he has friends who have been helped by these medications... 'Matt, Matt, Matt, you're just so glib'. It's pretty obvious who the glib and uninformed party is. To go so far as saying there is no such thing as chemical imbalance is unconscinable. Everybody around these parts got a big nasty taste of my chemical imbalance and what it's like when somebody who desperately needs medication doesn't take it. I would never want to put anyone through that again.

[guigsy]

alright, im at the 12:07 mark and i just had to pause it to say thanks marco for posting this thing, and man am i so fucking glad i waited to pack a sweet bowl before i started watching this... what happened to tom cruise?

"knowing kids on ridalin isnt enough."

[guigsy]

holy shit there's some shit goin down in st. louis!!

crazy explosions!!

[AdamH]

His anti-psychotropic stance is a scientology thing. It's the only plausible component of the movement i.e. anti-drug and alcohol, pro-healthy mind and body. Of course you don't need to pay $10K to become "Cleared" to find out that for the most part that is good for most people, zero's points being well-taken of course.

The whole thing is somewhat ridiculous and suspect since its being spearheaded by a notoriously reclusive celebrity.

His fiancée joey potter though? Hot:

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

His anti-psychotropic stance is a scientology thing. It's the only plausible component of the movement i.e. anti-drug and alcohol, pro-healthy mind and body. Of course you don't need to pay $10K to become "Cleared" to find out that for the most part that is good for most people, zero's points being well-taken of course.

I think you're spot on here (I confess to a little impatience around Scientology; I think it requires a little too much suspension of disbelief, and hard cash). I'm waiting, though, for the day when religious practice - and psychiatry, for that matter - is clearly enough linked with the material effects on the brain as drugs. People at MIT have been doing research for a couple of years doing brain studies of people practicing different kinds of meditation - Christian, Buddhist, etc., which will be interesting when it's finally all packaged up. There's also research these days - via MRIs too, chiefly - pointing to an identity of effects between psychiatric strategies like Cognitive Aversion Therapy ("thought-replacement" exercises) and SSRIs. Funny to think that our thoughts themselves can be a drug - and at the same time, I think, perfectly intelligible.

On a different note, it's hard to watch an interview with an interviewer like this who refuses to be gainsaid. I do have to admit that Cruise is right when he says that without knowledge of the history of psychiatry, it's impossible to get the bigger picture of what mental illness can be about, and that a talk-show host has a terrific responsibility to be broadly and deeply educated, which this guy just seems not to be. Kinda fits with the network, though.

Geez, I can't believe I just came out with two points in favour of Tom Cruise. It must be the sun.

[Jaimoe]

Tom is totally whacked. He had a Church Of Scientology tent set up at the War Of The Worlds shoot.... for personal daily worship.

[bouche]

I just hear Tom basically saying that pumping people full of drugs to mask problems is wrong. Some conditions do need drugs to overcome mental and physical problems. How do you treat arthritis without anti-inflammatories?

However, why pump kids full of drugs because they are distracted at school?

[paisley]

I agree with some of the principles of Tom's arguments, just don't like the wacko look in is eye as he says other people don't understand psychology the way he understands psychology for the fifth time (heard him the first four)

best if you can defeat your afflictions without the aid of drugs, but if can't get your head around how to do that sometimes drugs can be helpful and sometimes are flat out necessary... nothing is absolute... yes ritalin is over-prescibed, like anti-depresants, but some folks actually need something to help them out (though likely a fraction of the people on those drugs nowadays)

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

Even R.D. Laing, usually touted as the godfather of the anti-psychiatry movement (against his better wishes), used to argue that people always needed whatever they needed to get them out of a tight spot. I'm with him there - even when those spots aren't all that tight for me .

[Freak By Night]

....about as in touch with life as a glazed ham...

That's hilarious Deeps... mind if I use it?

[Hux]

My 2 cents: While there are certainly many individuals who's only option to treat a condition is specific meds, I do think there is generally a dominant culture of over-medication, and ignorance of natural and non-chemical treatments. I don't think the issue is as black and white as Cole Trickle thinks it is, but I think the world could use more voices speaking out against the disgusting dominance the pharmaceutical industry has - when a physician is getting free vacations and other incentives to push a certain drug, what are the odds they would prescribe something different? Not to say every Doctor is corrupt, but Big Pharma is just that, a cash machine with franchises in every city and town.

[phorbesie]

BWAHAHA!!!