Psychology and society…

Ole Jacob Madsen.

[Updated February 4 in the end of this blogposting]. This posting was quickly translated (from Norwegian) and written in the middle of a lot of work.

“Psychologists are lacking self-knowledge (self-understanding). The psychology profession is lacking capacity to see its own political impact and has overseen the growth of the therapeutic culture.”

The author of the article linked above (Ole Jacob Madsen, psychologist coming with the book "Psychology and Society" fall 2009) writes that the last years the psychologists in Norway (as a group or union) have been operating with the strategic goal of getting the psychology out to people, at the same time as the profession shall become stronger represented in the society’s development and planning than it has been. A striving to become a central actor in the society and a political pusher, with a broad perspective.

But “The Era of Psychology” and “the Therapy Society” are sociological ideas that aren’t new in intellectual milieus. No, nothing of this is actually new though he tries to point out, in my understanding and interpretation (of a text in Norwegian, quite academic too).

The analysis of the psychology’s increased influence in the Western Culture contains interesting questions. Has human development with focus on treatment of illness only been amicable (good)?

Is psychology the answer to individuals’ problems, or is the illness a symptom on a greater cultural crisis?

The British professor in sociology Nikolas Rose has shown how psychological norms, values, pictures of ideas (or conceptions) and techniques have formed how different societal authorities are thinking about peoples’ illnesses, normality and pathology. The psychology becomes active in most areas of modern life with developing independent fields of subjectivity in accordance with the society’s needs for regulating this independence.

Yes, the profession has too often run the power’s errands, the power’s needs for steering people!!! (And once again: the most defended tend to lead!)

But yes, this science HAS contributed with good things too, and the author points to those too.

For instance see the well-known study “the Hawthorne experiment” in USA (the Hawthorne effect); the feeling of being seen on a workplace increases the productivity. This was the start point for the Human Relation movement.

The critical voices against the psychology’s increased influence, especially in the US, and later in the rest of the Western world, is focusing on that the clinical psychology preferably presents individual solutions to problems that rather are social (societal?) and political. Thus there are good arguments to understand the psychology in an ideological perspective, such as the real ground why people are suffering.

Yes, psychology can really become misused, by the power!? As all science can become!?

The author writes that the subject the nineteenth decade gave birth to and its neoliberal project has by many become described as (the creation of) a corporate-self, forced to administer itself as an achievement. The psychologist in this culture gets a central place, among a lot of new expert profession groups, helping people to self steering.

Yes, you have only yourself to blame!? You have to pull yourself together, get a grip on yourself!

From 1940 and forward the psychology profession and the number of psychological illnesses grew (and is still growing?). Individual critics maintain that many (new) illnesses are strangely sharp, followed by a wish about power on the one hand and by a narrow view or thoughtlessness on the other hand.

However, this sort of criticism isn’t gaining the relational of the state of things between psychology and society the author thinks, because psychological language answers to needs in the society.

The psychology’s legality became increased during the decade after WWII in the US, because federal authorities need an allied to defend its presence in the inmates’ life and living. Earlier one stimulated the lust of reading in the inmates with scaring with the evil; the way to damnation went through the Bible. But the institutionalized religion lost its power with time, and became exchanged or compensated by typical therapeutic motives where the danger now is becoming bullied or having bad self confidence, becoming tools against illiteracy. (???? I didn’t really catch this! Need to read this again and more thoroughly?)

Comparative historical studies are though at risk of becoming reactionary idealizations of past times, but there are interesting religion-sociology applications. They point to the unsound that existential guilt no longer is placed outside the human being. Or that a self-disciplined system like the therapeutic can represent the authoritarian patriarchy, because it is only rights and not duties that are promoted, something that creates an imbalance between the individual’s and the society’s needs.

Of course psychotherapy can be healing for individuals, but from a system perspective you can speculate if the well-meant help just as well is at risk of becoming a part of easy won political solutions, where the individual becomes garbage can for the society’s unsolved conflicts.

What does the profession itself say? Relatively little. The answer to the society’s conflicts is always more psychology. The psychology’s self-understanding as underrepresented in the society is standing in contrast to the general knowledge and the profession’s description of the therapeutic culture.

The author writes about the (psychology) profession’s lack of history (lack of awareness about its history rather?), when exposed to critical reflection, but with a shameless eager to offer its services.

If the psychology’s character in itself isn’t worthy critics, then its limited apparatus for understanding itself is alarming.

Addition February 4: As a thought it was a leader today with the title ”More Wallraffing in the Psychiatric care” where you can read in the beginning something in this style:

”Why does it never seem to become any order in the psychiatry? For centuries the mental hospitals were often shocking fields of experiments for different [pseudo] scientific and therapeutic ideas, from swings to cold baths, over lobotomy to a blind faith (superstition) on different miraculous (wonder making) psychoactive drugs.”

Read about Günter Wallraff here. There you can read:

"His investigative methods have led to the creation of the Swedish verb 'wallraffa', meaning 'to expose misconduct from the inside by assuming a role', which has been officially included in word list of the Swedish Academy."