(Note: this does not apply to all (or perhaps even most) of psychology or psychologists. I mean to blog about the most dangerous parts and ones.)
The efforts of psychologists to pathologize aspects of the human condition remind me of the Christians' view that man is inherently and inevitably by his nature corrupt and evil. Additionally, just as Christianity offered a solution to the view of life it propagated, so too has Psychology offered a solution. In fact, both the psychologists and the Christians have offered us many, many solutions. In Psychology we have the different theories and schools of thought (and not to mention drugs). And in Christianity we have the different denominations and even offshoots of the faith. But while they both provide multitudes of choices, we still must accept their own premises.
The efforts of psychologists to pathologize aspects of the human condition remind me of the Christians' view that man is inherently and inevitably by his nature corrupt and evil. Additionally, just as Christianity offered a solution to the view of life it propagated, so too has Psychology offered a solution. In fact, both the psychologists and the Christians have offered us many, many solutions. In Psychology we have the different theories and schools of thought (and not to mention drugs). And in Christianity we have the different denominations and even offshoots of the faith. But while they both provide multitudes of choices, we still must accept their own premises.
Their ideas of the good life, or rather the mode of existence worth striving for, are importantly similar in that they are both idyllic: Christianity's heaven ("Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst."), and Psychology's conception of a life without any stress, any grief, even from loss and any feeling of lacking. Though I do not believe Psychology has reached the extreme of Christianity yet, I do see psychology as approaching it.
As the psychologists identify an increasing amount of different behaviors and attitudes as being pathologically significant, the scope of what the good life could (or even may) be becomes narrower and narrower. This obviously has a powerfully normalizing effect on society, similar to that of the tyranny of monotheism.
