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Ediblog.com Selwyn Duke
The Hard Truth About A Soft Science: Why Psychology Does More Harm Than Good
©
2008 Selwyn Duke
In
his book The Future of an Illusion,
Sigmund Freud said of religion and morality, “It
would be an undoubted advantage if we were to leave God out altogether and
admit the purely human origins of all the precepts and regulations of
civilization.” In
making this statement, Freud weighed in on one of life’s most important
questions: What is the nature of right and wrong?
Is it real, something existing apart from man, a reflection of
Absolute Truth, of God’s will?
Or is it, in accordance with the atheist model, merely a product of
mortal minds and thus synonymous with consensus opinion?
Freud made it clear he believed the latter.
While
many may debate Freud’s influence over modern psychology, there is no
doubt that the atheism and moral relativism he espoused reign in it.
This is not to say there aren’t exceptions.
There is the American Association of Christian Counselors, and many
people will speak glowingly of positive experiences with Christian
therapists. And,
while I myself would never have need of such services (although some of my
critics may beg to differ), I have had the pleasure of corresponding with
an individual of this stripe, author, speaker and family psychologist John
Rosemond, a man traditional to the core.
Yet, in just the way we refer to the Founding Fathers’ ideology
as “classical liberalism” so
as to distinguish it from the modern variety, there is a reason why we use
a modifier and call such people “Christian
Counselors”: They are not the norm. Without
a doubt, psychology has in a great measure become a bastion of secularism,
born of atheism and molded in its lukewarm fires.
As to this, in her piece “With God as My Shrink,” Pamela Paul quotes
Brigham Young University psychology professor Scott Richards as saying, “Not
only was Freud antireligion, but the behaviorists who came afterward were
extremely eager to avoid religion in order to establish psychology as a
respected science.”
Paul
goes on to cite these statistics: “Nearly
three-fourths of Americans say their whole approach to life is based on
religion. But only 32 percent of psychiatrists, 33 percent of clinical
psychologists and 46 percent of clinical social workers feel the same.”
Yet
even this understates the matter.
Like so many nowadays, these people’s ideas about faith aren’t
the traditional variety.
They may pay homage to an ambiguous conception of spirituality and
profess a belief in God, but just ask them about morality.
More often than not they will tell you that right and wrong is a
matter of perspective.
This
is ironic, since the word “psychology” dates from 1653 and originally
meant “study of the soul.”
Yet it is hardly surprising.
Science deals in empiricism, in what can be observed, touched and
quantified, and nothing spiritual, be it the soul, Truth or something
else, qualifies. Thus,
psychology prefers to view man as an organic robot, a cosmic accident, one
whose actions are explainable in terms of its hardware (genetics) and
software (conditioning or socialization).
And it prefers to view that socialization not as inculcation with
Truth, but with those expressions of collective opinion known as
“values.” The
problem with this is that reality doesn’t yield to preferences, and you
cannot improve something’s function if you misunderstand its nature.
If psychology’s predominant school of thought is correct and
there is no God, no Truth and we have no souls, then, sure, we are simply
a few pounds of chemicals and water; hence, organic robots. And this would
have some staggering implications.
For
one, morality is then mere
opinion, and we can’t expect opinion to govern the operation of the
human “machine” any more than it influences the rotation of the Earth.
But what if we are spirit as well as flesh?
What if Truth and, therefore, morality exist, and, as Aristotle
believed, living a moral life is a prerequisite for happiness?
It then follows that we cannot expect to enjoy happiness unless we
know what morality is and acknowledge it.
It also follows that a practitioner who endeavors to help patients
achieve a happier state but who is disconnected from morality will labor
in vain.
Yet
the problem with psychology is not just that those within the field may be
peddling a relativistic creed, but that it has provided a specious
scientific basis for relativism’s wider embrace.
We now live in the age of “If it feels good, do it,” a maxim
that is eminently logical if morals are really values and values are
determined by man.
Because of this, it is also the age of no accountability; after
all, if right and wrong are merely opinion and thus don’t truly exist,
how can anything I’ve done be wrong?
Haven’t you heard, you provincial thinker, that you aren’t
supposed to impose your values on me?
Don’t you know I have my own “truth”?
And, if nothing can be truly wrong, there is nothing to be
accountable for.
For
this reason, I might call psychology the science of why we not
accountable. Think
about it: Everything formerly labeled a sin is now diagnosed as a disease
or condition of the brain.
If you drink too much, it is simply because of your genetics or
chemistry; if you’re engaging in homosexual behavior, that is a gene
too; if you’re an ill-behaved child, it may be ADHD; if you murdered
your husband, you perhaps were in the grip of PMS; and the list goes on.
And even if, by chance, the accident that is you wound up with a
well-functioning organic CPU, you’re still at the mercy of your
environment (although the nurture argument seems to have lost weight in
recent times). Sure,
you robbed the convenience store, but you were simply programmed
incorrectly by mommy, or perhaps daddy wasn’t there to provide the data
that only XY org-robs can.
It’s a variation on the “The Devil made me do it argument,”
except that the Devil is now even less than a dark angel.
As doomed genetic engineer Dr. Moreau said in the movie The
Island of Dr. Moreau: “I've seen the Devil, in my microscope and I
have chained him, and I suppose you could say, in a sense, metaphorically
speaking, I have cut him to pieces. The Devil, Mr. Douglas, I've found is
nothing more than a tiresome collection of genes . . . .”
The
danger of this may be obvious.
I cannot prove to you that God and, therefore, Truth and true
morality exist; I cannot show you a soul in a Petri dish.
But this is undeniable: If you convince people they’re not
responsible for their actions, you’ve set the stage for great evil to
occur, as they will be able to justify anything suiting their fancy.
Rape, kill, steal, why not?
Who is to say it’s wrong?
And, even if society’s tastes are such that it has made laws
prohibiting my tastes or has labeled my tastes a disease, is a person
responsible for an illness visited upon him?
We don’t hold someone accountable for having cancer, after all.
No, a gene made me do it.
Or perhaps it was abuse by my father, in which case a gene made him
do it. In
any case, if you won’t alter society’s values to accommodate yet
another deviation from the norm – if you won’t remove my tastes from
the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), as you did with homosexuality in
1973 – then “cure” me.
But don’t bother me with anachronisms such as morality.
And
this attitude is reflected in so many ways in our time, but one instance
in particular leaps to mind.
Many years ago I read an anonymous pedophile’s perspective on his
perversion, and here is what he said (I’m paraphrasing): “I didn’t
ask to have these feelings, so what am I supposed to do?”
Follow your heart, right?
Yet
the implications of this collective sense that we aren’t responsible for
our actions and that they can’t be “wrong” anyway go far beyond the
resulting social breakdown.
They even go beyond the governmental response, which is to step in
and control from without people who do not control themselves from within.
For the truly scary implication under such a scenario is not just
that people will not govern
their impulses, but that they cannot
do so. After
all, if we are merely organic robots, at the mercy of our genes
(hardware), chemistry and upbringing (software), we have no free will. It
then follows that we cannot choose among, well, call them what you will,
God’s morals or man’s values, as we are directed by things beyond our
control. This
reduces us to animals.
While Christianity teaches that the two things making us like God
and separating us from the animal kingdom are intellect and free will –
two qualities necessary to be fully human – this idea tells us that,
bereft of the second quality, we are mere automatons.
Of course, if Freud et al. are correct, that is all we are,
chemicals and water arranged in a most interesting fashion – with a good
helping of illusion thrown in for good measure.
Thus, insofar as psychology succeeds in convincing us that there is
no accountability because there is no free will – no ability to choose
sin because there is no sin, only disease – it dehumanizes us.
Perhaps
this dehumanization is why psychiatry has quite a history of using humans
as guinea pigs. There
was Benjamin Rush (the father of American psychiatry) and his
bloodletting; Nazi experiments; electric shock and lobotomies; our MK
ULTRA mind-control program; and Canadian psychiatrist Heinz Lehmann, who
illegally used Thorazine on subjects in the 1950s.
Then, reviewing the book Mad
in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of
the Mentally Ill, Brian Doherty tells
us about: Henry
Cotton of Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey, who theorized that germs
from tooth rot caused insanity and established a very respectable cure
rate by pulling asylum inmates' teeth, then later other body parts he
decided were breeding grounds for disease (thereby killing 43 percent of
his patients); the Swiss Jacob Klaesi, who discovered that inducing deep
sleep with barbiturates for weeks on end was an effective cure; Harvard
men John Talbott and Kenneth Tillotson, who found that binding patients in
freezing cold blankets until their body temperature fell 10 to 20 degrees
below normal was quite therapeutic for the mentally ill; the Viennese
Manfred Sakel, the father of induced insulin comas as therapy . . . .
Thus,
there is a perverse consistency between the implications of psychology’s
atheistic world view and its darker chapters.
After all, what is wrong with experimenting on organic robots?
In an effort to control them and eliminate their defects, what
could be wrong with altering their impulses (their chemistry) or
reprogramming them (social engineering)?
And while it doesn’t lie within the scope of social science,
I’ll add, what could be wrong with manipulating their hardware (genetic
engineering)? A
few pounds of chemicals and water . . . .
Aside
from the obvious lack of compassion inherent in yesterday’s uses of the
field, I also have to wonder about today’s.
We’re often told that taking people to task for moral lapses,
whether the issue is drinking, drug use, perverse behavior or something
else, is uncompassionate.
Yet I view it differently, and let us consider one example.
If I give a child a tongue lashing (and maybe an actual one, too)
for being a brat, I’m saying that he can and must improve his behavior.
But what of telling him he has ADHD?
How is it compassionate to say he has a defect in his brain, one
damning him to a Hell of abnormality and that will never, ever go away?
And the same can be said of all the other newly-minted “diseases
of the brain” or quirks of genetic fate.
Talk about disempowering the individual; he is being told that if
there is a helping hand, it certainly doesn’t lie at the end of his arm.
Yet
it’s certainly easy to understand why the mental health field wants us
to believe salvation lies at the end of its arm.
Money. It
also has a distinct advantage insofar as this goes.
You see, since its diagnoses aren’t dependent upon discovery of a
biological cause – a virus, bacterium or structural abnormality – it
can grow its DSM inexorably.
I have often said that psychology is the only field in which the
practitioners invent diseases and conditions for themselves to diagnose.
As
to this, I recently read about psychiatrists who are labeling the desire
to engage in excessive text messaging a mental disorder.
Then there is “Muscle Dysmorphia,” or the obsessive belief that
one isn’t muscular enough; “celebriphilia,” the strong desire for
amorous relations with a celebrity; “Intermittent Explosive Disorder,”
or road rage; “Sibling Rivalry Disorder”; “Mathematics Disorder”;
“Caffeine Related Disorder”; and “Expressive Writing disorder,” to
cite just a handful of the hundreds of made-up conditions in the DSM.
And every time a new variety is conjured up, psychology’s market
and earning potential increases.
I have to wonder, though, what do they call the obsession with
labeling behaviors mental disorders?
Some might call it greed.
Yet,
as ridiculous as this seems, it’s also very consistent and
understandable. Whether
a religionist or atheist, one can’t help but notice that these organic
robots don’t operate the way most of us would like.
The Christian explanation for this is that we’re all sinners, but
this is religious terminology and quite inappropriate for a machine.
So psychology says we’re all mentally ill; it’s just a
malfunction in the CPU, you see.
Then, because a machine cannot commit sins but can be “out of
order,” it calls them disorders.
Thus, a defiant child or employee isn’t ruled by pride but has
“Oppositional Disorder,” a person with a lack of gratitude isn’t
just that but one who suffers from “Chronic Complaint Disorder,” and a
man who is shallow and vain isn’t just that but one plagued by “Muscle
Dysmorphia.” So
there is a limit to the number of disorders that can be “invented,”
and it’s roughly equivalent to the numbers of ways in which people can
sin.
This
brings us to an irony.
In a strange way, this “study of the soul” is aptly named, as
in a great measure psychology has usurped the role of religion.
It co-opts sins, renames them, and then takes credit for their
discovery; you could call it spiritual plagiarism.
I also might say that mental health professionals have become the
new priesthood. After
all, whereas years ago people might have gone to a man of the cloth for
guidance, now they are likely to lie on a therapist’s couch.
The prescriptions they get are far different, too.
A priest, minister or rabbi would usually render advice steeped in
tradition and God-centered, but the psychologist is most likely to offer
relativistic counsel, where the focus is on feelings and is thus
self-centered. And
what happens when the matter of religion is raised?
If you’re like many, including someone I know of, you may be told
you’re taking your faith too seriously, that such devotion is akin to a
mental illness. This
isn’t surprising, I suppose.
What future could a person have with an “illusion,” even the
very attractive one that Freud seemed to believe was the opiate of the
masses? Yet,
with over 20 million Americans, 40 percent of college students and 1 out
of 9 schoolchildren on psychiatrist-prescribed psychoactive drugs, one is
left to wonder what realm is truly most deserving of that title.
Selwyn Duke is a freelance writer out or Larchmont, NY. He has written for various publications including: IntellectualConservative.com, AmericanThinker.com and is a regular columnist for RenewAmerica.us.
Comments or Remarks on this piece: editor@ediblog.com
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