So, to some degree, s/he has a point. Psychology, at worst, can involve the imposition of quite severe and compulsory invasive medical treatment without any proper grounding in, you know, evidence. It HAS been used by dictators. The psychological project DOES flirt with a sort-of make-everyone-the-same conformity in the name of science that Kurt Vonnegut and Ken Kesey were so fucking scared about. Those are legitimate criticisms. It can ludicrously over-diagnose people who are actually just a little strange or unlike you. It can turn the doctor's inability to empathise with a perfectly healthy difference of opinion into a false diagnosis (Liberalism is a mental illness, hur hur). But it's not enough to just say - it does this, make it stop. WHY does it do that?
The simple problem is that brain science is really, really hard. It's made even harder by the fact that they're, arguably, working from the wrong end. Basically, psychologists look at symptoms and try to find cures for the symptoms of broken cognition, while psychiatrists try to analyse the cause of broken cognition. Probably the psychiatric project has more promise, in my opinion, because you can actually quantify an MRI scan properly.
BUT! There have been some successes - talk therapy is a relatively goodish idea in lieu of any alternative, for instance. The problem with working with symptoms, though, is that symptoms are super-hard to classify systematically without being so broad that essentially everyone has them.
However, this is obviously a rational critique of psychology and reason isn't what these people are about.
#BanPsychology
- It is completely arbitrary.
At worst, not always. Is it arbitrary to want to help people not to kill themselves?
- It seeks to benefit oppressors, especially cishet white men.
Arguably - this is half-assed Foucault. But, to Foucault, all language helps white men and there is nothing strange about psychological language in this respect.
- It promotes “normal” behavior which is defined by oppressors.
Again, not an illegitimate argument except if you try to apply it in all circumstances which you have.
- It marks people as “sick” when they aren’t necessarily sick. Being gay used to be a “mental illness”
This is THE argument against psychology.
So does higher education. So do railways. Are we going to get rid of all the railways?
- It colonizes the minds/bodies of people and gives that agency to their “doctors” (who are almost always white cishet men)
Better argument - it completely denies all agency. Every decision you make is just a symptom.
- It benefits the educated and privileged with a career choice that makes lots of money, feeding off more vulnerable oppressed people
This is silly.
- "Mental illnesses" are not illnesses, they are mutations and probably the next step in evolution. People with so-called mental illnesses are almost always more talented and skilled than those without them.
Special snowflakes uber alles. This is straight supremicism.
- It places unnecessary emphasis on traits like empathy, intelligence and “relating to others”
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