By 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. 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 . . . .” 

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.

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.

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