This month I received an invitation to submit an article to the Pennsylvania Psychologist magazine on the theme “Myths in Psychology.” Without hesitation, I knew both what I wanted to write and that the imagined article would never be published. I would have entitled it “The Myth that Psychology Respects Open Scientific Discussion and Debate.” And before explaining why I chose the topic, I must say that although I believe psychologists have as much right as anyone else to take political positions, they have no right to flood the citizenry with biased or uncontested politically-one-sided propaganda.
The simple truth is that Psychology is at least as interested—I would argue often MORE interested—in politics than in science. As one example, today, August 29, 2023, I quote “From APA Journals Article Spotlight” (https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/amp):
How psychologists can help achieve equity in health care: Advancing innovative partnerships and models of care delivery.
Public Psychology: Cultivating socially engaged science for the 21st century
Studying societal change: Novel methods and theoretical advances in Psychology
The Psychology of American racism and how to work against it
Rethinking adult development
Fifty years since Stonewall: The science and politics of sexual orientation and gender diversity
American Psychologist special issue on Racial Trauma and Healing
Updating maps for a changing territory: Redefining youth marginalization"
At first glance, the aforecited articles seem extremely important and fully worthy of scientific investigation. But if you read them and any such investigation promulgated by the American psychological establishment, you will find that they typically proceed from biased assumptions that “science” supports such beliefs as:
Only white people can be racist,
Only white people can enact microaggressions,
Only non-traditional moral and family values should be espoused,
Black-white biracial people legitimately can pretend to be fully black rather than black and white, but not vice versa,
And that an individual, and only that individual can “demand” that they are whatever gender they want to be, and that they can switch back and forth from one gender to another as frequently and as arbitrarily as they desire.
To my way of thinking, Psychology has nothing special or unique to contribute to any of the above topics, except for the Rethinking adult development one. If anything, most of such topics are more suitable to an Epidemiological or Sociology journal.
Why not have Psychology give special attention, research, and advocacy to such areas wherein Psychology can make a uniquely substantive, concrete difference, such as to violence prevention, to race-blind acceptance of all human beings, and to facilitating the creation and maintenance of intact two-parent families for all races, and for persons of all socioeconomic strata? Or, perhaps you would be more open to the recommendations of Critical Psychology Network Connecting Students and Critical Psychology Scholars across Canada” if the recommendations were done in a totally unbiased, purely scientific manner:
"What is the nature of the discipline and profession of psychology?
How are {psychological} questions, methods, and findings interrelated?
What assumptions underpin much of psychological research, theory, and practice?
How does psychology around the world differ?
How do globalization and neo-liberalism impact psychology?
How do cultures, history, language, and power contribute to how we understand ourselves and the world around us?
How can we study human phenomena in ways that maintain human dignity, without turning people into mere ‘objects of study’?
How do DSM categories serve to pathologize distress?
What are the benefits and costs of diagnostic labelling and the Categorization of people into types?
What is the relation between psychology and power?
What is the relation between power and how students are taught psychology (e.g., what topics, what methods)?
What role does power play in the conduct of psychological research?
How do social, cultural, and political factors influence knowledge-making in psychology?
How does power operate through the knowledges produced in psychology?
What assumptions does psychology hold/reinforce about gender, sexuality, dis(ability), race and class?
How are politics, power, and society implicated in people’s ‘private’ experiences of distress?
How can psychologists do research that benefits society, combats injustice, and improves peoples’ lives? "
At the time I completed my doctoral training in psychology, psychology could legitimately claim to be a science in search of truth irrespective of politics. Sadly, that is no longer true.
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