Our Threatened Freedom

Are Psychology and Psychiatry Scientific

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Political Studies

Lesson: 17-169

Genre: Conversation

Track: 017

Dictation Name: Vol. B – Part 04 – Are Psychology and Psychiatry Scientific

Location/Venue: Unknown

Year: 1980’s – 1990’s

[Dr. Rushdoony] Are psychology and psychiatry scientific? This is R.J. Rushdoony with a report on our threatened freedom.

Are psychology and psychiatry deserving of the classification of science? Is psychotherapy valid, is it a genuine method of healing and understanding? Quite obviously, some people have a great deal of faith in psychotherapy. Increasingly, public schools have staffed psychologists or counselors trained in psychotherapy. Some doctors recommend psychotherapy for mentally troubled patients. The veterans’ administration and other civil agencies rely on psychotherapy. Court ordered examinations of criminal offenders are an important part of many trials. Many seminaries and churches train their pastors in psychotherapeutic methodologies.

Increasingly, however, men from within psychology and psychiatry are challenging the basic premises of their disciplines. One of the key figures here has been the psychiatrist Dr. Thomas {?}, M.P. Who’s attacked the very idea of mental sickness

More recently, Dr. Martin Bobgan and Deidre Bobgan, psychologists, have added their weight to this challenge. The problem, they point out, with others, is not mental sickness, but sin.

Earlier, Hans J. {?} study showed that psychotherapy is not effective in treating mental disorders, in fact, people are more likely to improve if they avoid all forms of psychotherapy. The evidence indicates that psychotherapy can be harmful.

The Bobgan’s conclude that psychotherapy is not a science.

J. {?} a California State University psychologist, in discussing psychiatric examinations of criminals has said that such a diagnosis is more likely to be wrong than right, and it is most likely to be wrong in trying to determine the mental condition of a criminal at the time of the crime.

The Bobgan’s in their book, ‘The Psychological Wave, a Spiritual Wave’, remind us that the biblical way of dealing with mental and moral problems is and has always been the most effective, and the one enduring method of coping with man’s problems, except where physical diseases create problems, thus calling for medical relief, man’s problems have as their cause a spiritual, a religious problem. To seek relief from a moral problem in non-moral means is to aggravate the problem.

But psychotherapy is powerful, because it is humanism in action, and our humanistic people want to deal with us and our children by means of humanism. Psychotherapy is thus an alien plan of salvation, and an enemy to Christianity.

R.J. Rushdoony, on our problems and freedom.