Dear Dr. Kraus,
We are well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of ISKCON. Your input, in
the guise of medical expertise, was not well intentioned but mean spirited
and meant to offend which it has.

In the future please do not send me or others this type of psychobabble rap.
I didn't ask for it nor am I interested in the babbling of a spiritually
retarded person. As the wit said: "There is nothing so foolish that you
can't get some one with a PhD to endorse it." Or, as was said of King James
of England who was described as "The most learned fool in all of
Christendom."

You pose as a friend of the devotees of Krsna when in fact you are a
non-practicing Buddhist [1] with an axe to grind.

You mention about devotee's missionary zeal to make a new member out of you.
I'm not one of them. To you I say "narakam gaccha."

People in general are over-awed by a person's material qualifications and
academic degrees, and unfortunately many members of ISKCON especially in the
West also fall into this category.  They specifically fall prey to
uncritical acceptance of humanistic "science."

You have used your material academic qualifications in psychology and
psychoanalysis to promote your own very imperfect understanding and to brow
beat and abuse a person whose main fault, according to you, is that he is a
"fanatic" and "fundamentalist." According to you anyone who tries to follow
strictly the teachings and precepts of the previous acaryas is a "fanatic"
and "fundamentalist." You have also denigrated the position of our spiritual
master and siksha guru for all of ISKCON the founder Acarya, Srila
Prabhupada.

It is not surprising that you have an antipathy and bias against God and
religion because this is the inherent nature of "psychoanalysis" founded by
the atheist Sigmund Freud:

"Recently, psychiatrists have begun to address the bias that exists within
their profession against spirituality and religion, which may be dated back
to some of the seminal writings of Sigmund Freud. It is indisputable that,
in the middle of the twentieth century and more specifically in the 1940s
and 1950s - under the influence of Darwinism and Freudianism - cognitive
scientists had a tendency to put forward erroneous scientific messages.
Their thesis then was that human beings are programmable and soulless
animals that are subject to control by enforced values, and that society was
in need of salvage from the constraints of the values and ethical restraints
associated with a religious upbringing." [2]

"Yet something about psychiatry may dissuade religious medical students from
applying to psychiatric residencies. Perhaps psychiatry's historical ties to
psychoanalysis, especially the anti-religion statements of Freud and the
liberal political views of many influential psychoanalysts of the
1950s-1960s, continue to influence religious physicians' views toward the
field. … The training of psychiatrists or the cultural environment within
psychiatry might also be factors if they affect psychiatrists' religious
worldviews…" [3]

You use your material credentials in psychology and psychoanalysis to
denigrate religion in general as irrational. I find this ironic when
psychoanalysis itself is considered a pseudo-science:

"Popper argued that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience because its claims are
not testable and cannot be refuted, that is, they are not falsifiable. For
example, if a client's reaction was not consistent with the psychosexual
theory then an alternate explanation would be given (e.g. defense
mechanisms, reaction formation) … Hans Eysenck determined that improvement
was no greater than spontaneous remission. Between two-thirds and
three-fourths of "neurotics" would recover naturally; this was no different
from therapy clients. Prioleau, Murdock, Brody reviewed several
therapy-outcome studies and determined that psychotherapy is not different
from placebo controls…

"Freud's psychoanalysis was criticized by his wife, Martha. René Laforgue
reported Martha Freud saying, "I must admit that if I did not realize how
seriously my husband takes his treatments, I should think that
psychoanalysis is a form of pornography." To Martha there was something
vulgar about psychoanalysis, and she dissociated herself from it. According
to Marie Bonaparte, Martha was upset with her husband's work and his
treatment of sexuality." [4]

Another reason his wife may have had a problem with it was because Freud had
an affair with her sister and got her pregnant:

"The 'talking cure' is widely seen as the basis of psychoanalysis. Carl Jung
initiated the rumor that a romantic relationship may have developed between
Freud and his sister-in-law, Minna Bernays, who had moved into Freud's
apartment at 19 Berggasse in 1896. Psychologist Hans Eysenck has suggested
that the affair resulted in a pregnancy and a subsequent abortion for Miss
Bernays. The publication in 2006 of a Swiss hotel log, dated 13 August 1898,
has suggested to some Freudian scholars (including Peter Gay) that there was
a factual basis to these rumors." [5]

Freud was also a cocaine user:

"Freud felt that cocaine would work as a panacea for many disorders and
wrote a well-received paper, 'On Coca,' explaining its virtues. He
prescribed it to his friend Ernst von Fleischl-Marxow to help him overcome a
morphine addiction he had acquired while treating a disease of the nervous
system. Freud also recommended it to many of his close family and friends. …
Jurgen von Scheidt speculated that most of Freud's psychoanalytical theory
was a byproduct of his cocaine use." [6]

All in all Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was a very tamasic person.

Your "training in psychoanalysis" is just another way of saying that you
have adopted a certain world view, one created by other fallible people like
yourself. It has become your religious belief. If I have to choose whom I
will put my trust in between Srila Prabhupada a pure devotee who represents
Lord Krsna and someone like you who represents the likes of Sigmund Freud
well it's a no brainer, I will choose Srila Prabhupada any day.

ABUSE OF MENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES

In the 1980's the Soviets sent many ISKCON devotees to psychiatric hospitals
(prisons) to be tortured, some unfortunately died in custody from the
treatments (torture). What was their crime? They believed in God. Obviously
according to Marxist thought, as you also believe, they must be delusional
and insane to believe in God, hence they were sent to these psychiatric
torture centers.

"In the Soviet Union, psychiatry was used for punitive purposes. Psychiatric
hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate
political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and
break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of
torture." [7]

"In 1985 and in 1986 the KGB orchestrated two court cases against members of
the society. As a result of these two cases eleven Hare Krishnas' were
imprisoned in State prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. Among
them were Karen Saakyan, Armen Saakyan, Suren Karapetyan, Sarkis
Ogandzhanyan, Gagik Buniatyan, Agvan Arytyunyan, Armine Hrtyan, Ara Akopyan
and Armen Sarkisyan. …

"Another member, Martik Zhamkochyan (25 yrs. of age), died in a psychiatric
hospital in the Sovetashen District of Yerevan in July 1986. In the
psychiatric hospital he was force-fed with raw eggs, which were administered
through a tube and he was simultaneously injected with large doses of
psycho-pharmacological drugs. After several days of such "treatment" he
died." [8]

Recently (2000) in the USA a student was committed to a psychiatric ward
because he objected to Jesus Christ being portrayed as a homosexual.

"A junior at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa., is suing university
officials for allegedly having him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric
ward following a dispute over a play depicting Jesus Christ as a homosexual.

"According to Brian Fahling, an attorney with the AFA Law Center in Tupelo,
Miss., which is handling the case, Michael A. Marcavage was detained after
he "'initiated a Christian response' to the university theater department's
decision to stage 'Corpus Christi,' a play that made its debut on Broadway
in 1998 and depicts Jesus as a homosexual who has sex with his disciples.

"In the play, Jesus was eventually crucified for being "king of the queers."
When it broke on Broadway, the play received national criticism. ..."

This student was not delusional or in any way mentally ill. His only fault
was his belief that Jesus Christ should not be insulted.

"… 'Besides being a college student on the Dean's List, Michael was a White
House intern with security clearance, is founder and president of a ministry
called Protect the Children, president of his own business, and a volunteer
who has worked with Campus Crusade for Christ and gone overseas with Feed
the Children,' Fahling said.

"'This is a good Christian kid who wanted to stand up for Jesus, and instead
was handcuffed and dragged to a mental hospital as if he'd been seeing pink
elephants,' he added." [9]

A Google search for the term "psychiatric abuse" returned 28,900 hits. (You
can try other permutations involving the words psychology and
psychoanalysis.) It seems that psychology and psychiatry have a long history
of abuse.

"Profound as psychology is, it's a knife that cuts both ways . . . You can
prove anything by it . . . I am speaking of the abuse of psychology,
gentlemen." -Feodor Dostoevsky, "The Brothers Karamazov"

And while we have particularly mentioned abuse by the Soviets we should not
overlook the egregious abuses in your own country by the Nazis and then
Communists. Here is an excerpt from the website of the German "Society for
Ethics in Psychiatry" GEP (we note that they consider psychoanalysis, which
you are studying, to be quackery):

"GEP's new bulletin (Rundbrief) 2/08 first shows another case of systematic
psychiatric abuse in the GDR [German Democratic Republic], the former
communist part of our country, and then continues with cases of psychiatric
malpractice which have taken place there just recently. This is hardly
consistent with the stainless picture professional bodies of psychiatrists
and psychologists display of their disciplines everywhere. It is buttressed
by political bodies and the media. In spite of many real achievements
psychiatry has reached in recent decades in delivering "mental health care",
its dark chapters should not be swept under the carpet since evil turns
happen in this field time and again ruining prosperous careers, destroying
human lives. And the atrocities of communist and specially Nazi psychiatry
occurred not so long ago.

"Psychotherapeutic tenets like psychoanalysis reportedly have mostly been
abandoned in Anglo-Saxon countries today. In spite of being regarded as
quackery in some quarters of other parts of the world, too, they have been
acknowledged officially and pushed into "scientific psychiatry" there,
specially in Germany, recently. ...

"... Beside psychiatry, however, psychology has been abused systematically
in the GDR for crushing political opposition hiding often behind a
smokescreen of humanely looking medical treatment." [10]

The whole of this site makes for interesting reading.

As a result of all this abuse has arisen the "Anti-psychiatry movement."

"... What much later became known as the anti-psychiatry movement had its
origin in concern over alleged misuse of psychiatric procedures for purposes
of social control ... Anti-psychiatry usually refers to a movement that
emerged in the 1960s hostile to most of the fundamental assumptions and
common practices of psychiatry. The igniting influences for this
configuration of groups and theories were Michel Foucault, R.D. Laing and
Thomas Szasz. The term anti-psychiatry was first used by the South African
psychiatrist David Cooper in 1967.

"Two central contentions of the anti-psychiatry movement are that:

  " 1. The specific definitions of, or criteria for, hundreds of current
psychiatric diagnoses or disorders are vague and arbitrary, leaving too much
room for opinions and interpretations to meet basic scientific standards.
   2. Prevailing psychiatric treatments are ultimately far more damaging
than helpful to patients. …" [11]

Abuse of mental health sciences is not a thing of the past or only the crime
of tyrannical governments but is going on at present. The following website

http://www.psychcrime.org/news/index.htm

is dedicated to reporting abuse in the mental health care industry.

Your offensive letter in which you indulged in unsolicited and abusive
psychoanalysis was a direct violation of ethical principles of the German
Psychological Society (DGP) and the Association of German Professional
Psychologists (BDP) which states the following:

"Psychologists recognize the self determination of individuals and their
right to live in accordance with their own convictions. In their
professional practice, psychologists endeavour to achieve objectivity and
impartiality and are alert to personal, social, institutional, economic and
political factors which may lead to the abuse or misuse of their knowledge
and skills.

"The ethical principles of the German Psychological Society and the
Association of German Professional Psychologists represent a binding code of
professional conduct for psychologists. The binding nature of these
standards is not restricted to the activities of psychologists in
professional contexts alone, but also extends to the conduct of members of
the profession in their capacity as psychologists in all aspects of their
lives." [12]

You didn't recognize our right to live according to our convictions but
rather violated all of the readers of your text by ridiculing us in various
ways under the pretext of helping us via your psychological analysis.

I have contacted the DGP and BDP and am making a formal complaint against
you for violating their codes of ethics. I am awaiting their response.

"Psyche" is borrowed from ancient Greek, and refers to the concept of the
self, encompassing the modern ideas of soul, self, and mind. The Greeks
believed that the soul or "psyche" was responsible for behaviour. [13]

Ultimately the only one who can heal our mental and emotional pains is Lord
Sri Krsna. Lord Krsna created our subtle body which consists of mind,
intelligence and false ego hence He knows best how to cure its ailments.
Indeed the whole of Vedic literature is aimed at healing the soul the
"psyche" from its present diseased state of material consciousness back to
its original state of Krsna consciousness. This, for most of us, is a
multi-lifetime process. The best understanding of the workings of the mind,
intelligence, false ego and atma (soul) is given in the Vedic literature
especially the system of Sankhya yoga as described in Srimad Bhagavatam.

The "Song of the Avanti Brahmana," Srimad Bhagavatam 11.23 gives a very
analytic study of the cause of all suffering as emanating from the mind and
is very therapeutic to read especially when one is in distress. In fact the
Gita itself is meant for removing all mental distress. This is a very deep
topic and one which you have no interest in having rejected it long ago so I
will not go further in this direction.

For other readers of this text I have included an attachment, two articles
by Sriman Krsna Kirti Prabhu entitled "The Essentials of Reform in ISKCON:
An Examination of Psychotherapy and its Compatibility with Krishna
Consciousness" and "Why Therapy and Other Self-Empowerment Initiatives are
Bad for Devotees" which discusses at length the tension between the Vedic
world view and Psychotherapy. This and many other useful articles can be
downloaded from:

http://siddhanta.com/siddhanta.zip.

As for you Dr. Daniel Kraus I do not aspire for your association, nor do I
care for you or your opinions nor do I want to correspond with you for that
would be fruitless. As I said before to you "narakam gaccha."  I have not
written this text for your benefit but for the unfortunate persons who had
to read your nonsense.

Yours in the service of my eternal master Srila Prabhupada
Shyamasundara dasa
http://www.shyamasundaradasa.com/



REFERENCES:

1 Dr. Daniel Kraus describes himself and family including religious beliefs
here http://tinyurl.com/cpg2lq

2 "Aspects of Religion Relevant to Psychiatry" by Dr. James Paul
Pandarakalam http://tinyurl.com/cmd9sz

3 "The Relationship Between Psychiatry and Religion Among U.S. Physicians"
by Farr A. Curlin, M.D., Shaun V. Odell, B.A., Ryan E. Lawrence, M.Div.,
Marshall
H. Chin, M.D., M.P.H., John D. Lantos, M.D., Keith G. Meador, M.D. and
Harold G. Koenig, M.D. From the September 2007 issue of "Psychiatric
Services" a Journal of the American Psychiatric Association.
http://tinyurl.com/c2x879

4 Criticism of Psychoanalysis, Wikipedia  http://tinyurl.com/darz2x  see
also http://tinyurl.com/cok4ph

5 http://tinyurl.com/dny3q4 "Freud and psychoanalysis" Wikipedia

6 http://tinyurl.com/c66tvz "Freud's Cocain use" Wikipedia

7 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psikhushka

8 http://www.iskcon.com/icj/2_2/armenia.html see also
http://pb.rcpsych.org/cgi/reprint/11/4/144.pdf  and
http://tinyurl.com/dh6yna the first entry authored by A Koryagin

9 http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=21225

10 http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/summaries.htm this site has many
interesting articles and is best accessed in its frame version
http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/index.html see also PSYCHIATRISTS: THE
MEN BEHIND HITLER http://tinyurl.com/cdngzk  and "The Men Behind the Nazi
Extermination Program"  http://tinyurl.com/d6mk54

11 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry this page has links to many
other "anti-psychiatry" websites.

12 http://www.bdp-verband.de/bdp/verband/ethic.shtml

13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(psychology)


LINKS TO ABUSES IN THE FIELDS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHIATRY


MFI is an independent nonprofit coalition defending human rights and
promoting humane alternatives for mental and emotional well being
http://www.mindfreedom.org/


Why Psychiatrists Disagree in Court

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840017,00.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry   this page has links to many
other "anti-psychiatry" websites

Many useful links to psychiatric abuse

http://humanrightsalert.wordpress.com/psychiatric-abuse/


PSYCHIATRY UNDERMINES RELIGION TO CREATE A MENTAL HEALTH STATE

http://www.happinessonline.org/CommonSenseMoralCode/p6.htm


http://www.psychcrime.org/index.htm click on "news"
http://www.psychcrime.org/news/index.htm

http://www.psychiatric-abuse.org.uk/