Politic?

Perverting Psychology

"We all will come into close contact with mental illness during our lives. The diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness must reflect the very best science possible. Good intentions are not enough. History is replete with well-intentioned practitioners offering treatments of no proven scientific value, that were enthusiastically embraced by patients and their families but ultimately did absolutely no good and kept people from seeking truly effective treatments."
"The vast majority of clinical psychologists are now trained in programs in which science plays only a minor role. In the epistemology embraced by many of these programs, the primacy of scientific evidence is rejected, and students are trained to use methods of diagnosis, treatment, and prevention that have little or no scientific support."
Robert W. Levenson, former president, Association for Psychological Science

"The document produced by the American Psychological Association [APA] purporting to provide guidelines for the psychological treatment of boys and men is disingenuous, scientifically fraudulent and ethically reprehensible. I believe that the people who wrote it are ill-informed, ideologically possessed, morally weak, and malevolent in their unacknowledged and overweening resentment. I am embarrassed and ashamed to have them speak on behalf of my profession, and would like to apologize to the public for not having been sufficiently awake and outraged earlier to have done more to stop something like this from happening."
Jordan B. Peterson, professor of psychology, University of Toronto

Jordan Peterson is beside himself with anger. Indignation at stupidity and political correctness sits well on Jordan Peterson. He is a thorough professional, a man steeped in his profession and it irritates him to distraction to witness how degraded his own profession has become in its knee-jerk prostration toward the casual abandoning of scientifically-proven standards by which psychology made a respected name for itself, to clasping a more 'progressive' equivalency view of feminist theory in place of science.

His critique of the newly-released Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men is one sizzling with indignation and fury. Dr. Peterson addresses the replacement of science by ideology in the complete and utter upheaval to compromise the science he practises. The language utilized in and of itself is more than sufficient to warn that The American Psychological Association has chosen to demean the profession by catering to the 'progressive' view of psychology through the lens of the LGBTQ2 community.

Words and phrases that set out the APA position in the document strain credulity, but they are there, large and opinionated: Gender, Cisgender, Gender Bias, Gender Role Strain, Masculinity Ideology, Gender Role Conflict, Oppression, Privilege, Psychological Practice, Gender Sensitive. Surely more than satisfactory to gain the sniffing approval of the aforesaid community and its legion of supporters. Just as well that Professor Peterson has his own legion of supporters who feel themselves oppressed and demeaned and sidelined.

According to the authors of the document, men socializing boys traditionally succeed in destroying their mental health. It is obviously, in their estimation, unhealthy to be masculine, to feel the emotions of a male, to consider oneself masculine in any way, shape or form. "Research suggests that socialization practices that teach boys from an early age to be self-reliant and strong, to minimize and manage their problems on their own yield adult men who are less willing to seek health treatment." If men encounter problems in their personal emotions they must perforce, immediately seek the guidance of a psychologist.

Who will steer them toward the feminine in their natures, persuading them that masculinity in any form is suicidal. Best of all, goes on the document: "Men are over-represented in prisons, are more likely than women to commit violent crimes, and are at greatest risk of being a victim of violent crime (homicide, aggravated assault)." That's their contention, and it's entirely skewed from reality. Aggression is inherent, not learned, and the recognition of that fact is that fathers and mothers teach boys inclined toward aggression to control it, as part of their socialization.

What is true, however, is that boys without fathers to pattern themselves on, and who will take their sons in hand and show by their own behaviour how to restrain impulses like aggression, are devoid of the opportunity to learn. Fatherless boys are more inclined to social deviance and that is fact. Boys without fathers to guide them become over-represented as alcoholics, drug addicts, gang members, prisoners, rapists, murderers. Dr. Peterson points out that the writers of the APA document he so deplores have a tendency to quote their own work as verification of what they state.

He also points out that the ideologues responsible for generating propagandist discourse point to Western culture as an oppressive patriarchy, male dominated, violent, racist, sexist, homo-, Islamo- and trans-phobic beyond redemption. From all of this it can be logically inferred that the progressives in social thought rejecting science in support of their profession have managed to pervert a once pre-eminent professional and scientific organization of U.S. psychologists.