Television personality Dr. Drew Pinsky had the unfortunate idea to give Tom Cruise and his affiliation with Scientology as an example of people with a mental illness that act bizarrely, only to have the actor’s lawyer release a stinging statement.

Dr. Drew Pinsky, who hosts the VH1 reality show “Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew,” told Playboy in an interview that Tom Cruise’s strong belief in Scientology could be a result of childhood “neglect.”

Pondering that “people in the public eye who behave strangely have mental illness we can learn from,” with much of it based on “childhood trauma,” Pinsky picked “a guy like Tom Cruise.”

“Why would somebody be drawn into a cultish kind of environment like Scientology? To me, that’s a function of a very deep emptiness and suggests serious neglect in childhood – maybe some abuse, but mostly neglect,” the 49-year-old psychiatrist concluded.

Once his remarks became public, Bert Fields, Cruise’s lawyer, snapped right back, calling him a “posturing flake” who “pretends to diagnose people he’s never met” and “suggests all Scientologists are mentally ill.”

Fields opined that such actions suggest “the quality of his opinions,” which he told People magazine were “ridiculous.”

Pinsky learned of the reaction and issued an apology to the Hollywood actor, saying he meant “no harm to Mr. Cruise and apologizes if his comments were hurtful.”

His response to Fields’ comments was not apologetic though. He accused the lawyer of intending “to slander and discredit” him and insisted once more that he was not making “a blanket diagnosis about Scientology nor Mr. Cruise whom he does not know.”

The psychiatrist said he had “simply” used Cruise as an example “of someone who is recognizable to help the public understand.”

Cruise has garnered much media attention due to his association with Scientology and not much of it has been positive. Such has been the fascination with this subject that Andrew Morton published an unauthorized biography this year which caused a sensation.

Morton, whose 1992 biography of Princess Diana was a top selling book, claimed Cruise was second-in-command in the Church of Scientology and that his child with wife Katie Holmes had been conceived with the sperm of Scientologist founder L. Ron Hubbard.

The Church of Scientology strongly criticized the book and said it was a complete fallacy.