Flipswitch

One of the clear things that keeps being returned by the critics of psychology is the number of abuses that have been done in its name over the years.  Some of these arguments are simply undeniable history.

Here’s a quick list of some bad mojo that’s gone on in the name of psychology:

Drapetomania: slaves are messed up because they don’t like being slaves.

Homosexuality: Up until at least the 70’s and actually even the 80’s, the gender of the person you had sex with could determine if you were mentally ill or not.  It took years of political activism by homosexual advocates to get the American Psychological Association to reverse its position.

Lobotamies: They used to push a spike into your frontal lobe, making you into little more than a zombie.  At the time, the inventor of this process was hailed as a genius for his “humane” treatment of mental illness.

Institutionalization of undesirables: At one time, it was not uncommon for unwed teen mothers to be such a shame to their families that they would be shipped off to mental institutions.  It was also not uncommon for “unruly” wives to be deemed mentally ill.

The horrid nature of institutions: In the 1970’s, an institution serving the mentally ill named Willowbrook was investigated for it’s horrid conditions.  It was one of the first times that photographic evidence of the nature of just how bad things were at such institutionswas recorded.  Films on Willowbrook are still available and it was the case that made Geraldo Rivera a household name.  Sadly, this was not an isolated incident.

And on and on.  There are a million of these little factoids in the annals of psychology.  The critics say these alone should be sufficient cause to cease and desist all psychological practice.

But the greater point that such critics make is that, all too often in the past, society has used the word “mental illness” to do horrible things to people that had done nothing wrong save make society a little uncomfortable.  Further, they point out that it is a society that would ship pregnant women to asylums in shame that are disordered.  Today, this is only a matter of degree.  These positions have been made quite public by philosophers and psychiatrists such as Michel Foucalt and RD Laing.

“You’re messed up because you’ve got depression.  It’s you.  It has nothing to do with the fact that you can’t get a job because the economy has tanked.  No, it must be you.”

You know what, say the anti-psychology people:  It’s all a scam!!!