Mental health under an illegitimate state
I'm making a new thread as it's not a directly related to the systemic racism in America issue.
Quoting Pfhorrest
The arguments I presented in the Racism issue are from a political perspective of evaluating the state's legitimacy to diagnose mental health issues and the role of psychologists in maintaining state order. Of course, a illegitimate state diagnoses dissidents as mentally ill and people who complain of intolerable working conditions as mentally ill.
You can verify that mental health providers are agents of the state in making an appointment for the purposes of exploring the justification of arson and looting as a political tool against oppression, if that oppression is really there and what other methods might be available to compete with arson and looting in a struggle against oppression, and to share one's struggle with these issues. I can guarantee you that even if you were to conclude arson and looting was not, not yet anyway, a viable pathway, that this agent of the state will not only provide no useful political analysis but the only consequence of this meeting is that you will be placed on a list.
For instance, China's "re-education camps" are entirely premised on the diagnosis of mental disease requiring "a cure". In promoting and developing a "scientific discipline" that is so easily compatible with such state mechanisms of oppression and social control, fitting so easily within such a tyrannical structure with the aid of western consultants educated in western institutions of so called learning, the entire international community of psychology, and by extension academic community that tolerate them, are equally guilty in Chinese genocidal re-education crimes.
America is not worse than China because the riots are worse, but better than China precisely because the riots are worse.
However, that being said, we cannot conclude from this that mental health does not exist, only that, without the presumption that agents of the state are there to help, mental health (as well as just living in general) is much more difficult and complicated.
That mental health exists need not be thrown out, only a deep suspicion of agents of the state ability to help provide it.
As to the subject of philosophy and mental health; indeed, philosophy is the only available foundational approach to mental health as "what is actually true" is needed to evaluate our situation, and we cannot learn what is true from a community so dedicated to manipulating us to buy this or that while supporting the creation of the technological totalitarian Chinese state: the first, full spectrum, mental prison from which there maybe no escape once finalized.
However, it is a mistake to view philosophy as a therapy. This contemporary development of "philosophical therapy" is simply the thrashing about of a discipline that is becoming aware of it's inadequacy to deliver any real value to society as a whole and, indeed, being always at the forefront of the greatest crimes against humanity: manipulative mass marketing being the most global and potentially the most harmful activity a group of humans has ever embarked upon.
Stoicism will improve mental health if you come to the conclusion that stoicism is really true.
All I can say is that the journey towards truth is a mentally hazardous journey. We grow up given a mental structure, to toss it aside, or any foundational part of it, and build a new structure is the definition of a mental breakdown. The role of psychology in society is to scare you away from doing any such breaking down; the role of philosophy is to invite you to see clearer what is worth tossing aside and what is worth building upon.
Analysis, however, if it is useful at all, can only ever provide a map of where you are and where you can go. But without emotions you will not be motivated to go anywhere. Consider perhaps, the stronger the emotions, the greater the journey you are called to travel.
Injustice cannot be separated from wild rage; the rage of those carrying out the injustice and the rage of those wanting it to stop. Therefore, one must accept that the rage can only be fully healed when humanity is healed, and until that day comes it is a blessing and not a curse; for without the rage we would not be motivated to do anything about it, and injustice would prevail among curious onlookers, which would be a more terrible end.
Quoting Pfhorrest
boethius What do you think about Stoicism in relation to mental health amidst societal injustice? (Which was the historical context in which Stoicism arose). I see clinical psychology and psychiatry as trying to serve the same ends as Stoicism by (sometimes) different means.
I have severe anger management problems that I’ve struggled with all my life, that I’ve always defended as reasonable anger in response to genuine wrongs, even though my angry responses only ever made things worse for me, not better. Last year I started having crippling panic and anxiety problems over nothing that I could identify (everything in my life was the best it had ever been at that time), which finally made me go looking for medication to help bring that under control. It did, I think, though it took a long time and was uneven in progress so it’s hard to tell.
I say “crippling” literally, in that I was not able to function as well in pursuit of my own goals, not able to get up the guts to face the things that I was panicking about. In retrospect I see my anger problems as crippling in a different way: I could have more effectively done something about the things I was angry about if I hadn’t been so overwhelmed with rage and out of control that I couldn’t think straight.
A calm, clear, focused mind is not necessarily one that is unquestioningly accepting of everything going on. It’s just a mind that is in control of itself, beholden only to its own reason, one that can decide rationally what is or isn’t actually a problem and what the best responding to that problem would be, and then most importantly, is able to do that best response because it is the best response, rather than feeling irrationally compelled to behave differently, hiding under the covers or punching holes in one’s own walls or whatever else one’s overwhelming emotions might otherwise push one to do instead of, you know, solving the problem.
The arguments I presented in the Racism issue are from a political perspective of evaluating the state's legitimacy to diagnose mental health issues and the role of psychologists in maintaining state order. Of course, a illegitimate state diagnoses dissidents as mentally ill and people who complain of intolerable working conditions as mentally ill.
You can verify that mental health providers are agents of the state in making an appointment for the purposes of exploring the justification of arson and looting as a political tool against oppression, if that oppression is really there and what other methods might be available to compete with arson and looting in a struggle against oppression, and to share one's struggle with these issues. I can guarantee you that even if you were to conclude arson and looting was not, not yet anyway, a viable pathway, that this agent of the state will not only provide no useful political analysis but the only consequence of this meeting is that you will be placed on a list.
For instance, China's "re-education camps" are entirely premised on the diagnosis of mental disease requiring "a cure". In promoting and developing a "scientific discipline" that is so easily compatible with such state mechanisms of oppression and social control, fitting so easily within such a tyrannical structure with the aid of western consultants educated in western institutions of so called learning, the entire international community of psychology, and by extension academic community that tolerate them, are equally guilty in Chinese genocidal re-education crimes.
America is not worse than China because the riots are worse, but better than China precisely because the riots are worse.
However, that being said, we cannot conclude from this that mental health does not exist, only that, without the presumption that agents of the state are there to help, mental health (as well as just living in general) is much more difficult and complicated.
That mental health exists need not be thrown out, only a deep suspicion of agents of the state ability to help provide it.
As to the subject of philosophy and mental health; indeed, philosophy is the only available foundational approach to mental health as "what is actually true" is needed to evaluate our situation, and we cannot learn what is true from a community so dedicated to manipulating us to buy this or that while supporting the creation of the technological totalitarian Chinese state: the first, full spectrum, mental prison from which there maybe no escape once finalized.
However, it is a mistake to view philosophy as a therapy. This contemporary development of "philosophical therapy" is simply the thrashing about of a discipline that is becoming aware of it's inadequacy to deliver any real value to society as a whole and, indeed, being always at the forefront of the greatest crimes against humanity: manipulative mass marketing being the most global and potentially the most harmful activity a group of humans has ever embarked upon.
Stoicism will improve mental health if you come to the conclusion that stoicism is really true.
All I can say is that the journey towards truth is a mentally hazardous journey. We grow up given a mental structure, to toss it aside, or any foundational part of it, and build a new structure is the definition of a mental breakdown. The role of psychology in society is to scare you away from doing any such breaking down; the role of philosophy is to invite you to see clearer what is worth tossing aside and what is worth building upon.
Analysis, however, if it is useful at all, can only ever provide a map of where you are and where you can go. But without emotions you will not be motivated to go anywhere. Consider perhaps, the stronger the emotions, the greater the journey you are called to travel.
Injustice cannot be separated from wild rage; the rage of those carrying out the injustice and the rage of those wanting it to stop. Therefore, one must accept that the rage can only be fully healed when humanity is healed, and until that day comes it is a blessing and not a curse; for without the rage we would not be motivated to do anything about it, and injustice would prevail among curious onlookers, which would be a more terrible end.
Comments (118)
But far from all illegtimate states rely on this. Most just brand dissidents as "traitors to the cause": Robust definitions of mental illness aren't required.
Quoting boethius
Why would you expect useful political analysis from someone whose field of work is mental health? And I am pretty sure it'd violate the principle of confidentiality to place you on some list for things you talked about in abstract.
Quoting boethius
Are they? I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation. They're called re-education camps after all, not asylums.
Quoting boethius
And by this logic the inventor of gunpowder is equally guilty in every single war and murder involving guns. That's a completely absurd moral philosophy.
Quoting boethius
So, who isn't an agent of the state?
Quoting boethius
Mass marketing is worse than genocide. You heard it here first folks.
Quoting boethius
Are you interested in my judgement on whether or not your post is worth building upon?
I don't think that follows at all. Maybe it is a sign of sanity in a mad world.
It's not an exclusive definition.
However, the roll of psychology to brand dissidents as mentally ill is primarily focused on children, over which the state has much more power and it is far more effective to destroy mentally a would-be-dissident adult in the name of mental health than to simply brand adult politically lucid dissidents as mentally ill, which is mostly ornamental as you suggest.
Quoting Echarmion
The vast majority of people of whom the state requires to create value, at at least shut up and not bother the state and who are not given any reasonable protection are not agents of the state. Academic benefit from the privileges the state provides (quality of life, reasonable legal protection of property, etc.), in return they are expected to conform to state policy and carry out state intellectual endeavors.
Quoting Echarmion
Oh, my bad, just "lack of proper socialisation" requiring a little fun re-education camping to rectify.
What? Is this direct from the politburo?
Quoting Echarmion
Yes, manipulative mass marketing underpins every modern destructive human enterprise, including the the Nazi genocide.
What convinced women to smoke? What convinced society the "science isn't settled" on smoking? What convinces society to over-consume with reckless abandon? What convinces global society that sustainability would be "too inconvenient"? What caused the obesity pandemic? What convinced Americans to pursue disastrous endless wars? What maintains China's system of state control? What maintains Trump's echo-chamber of die-hard supporters?
Anything truly terrible in society on most national and, moreso, on a global level, there is always manipulative mass marketing techniques convincing people to carry out or then do nothing to stop that terrible thing.
I am fully convinced humanity does not "want" to destroy the planet's ecosystems, and, therefore, if that is the case, someone must be manipulating humanity to behave in away despite "what they want".
And yes, the 6th mass extinction and the destruction of the entire world's capacity to support civilization, and perhaps any human, is far more terrible than any particular genocide. Clearly destroying the whole set is worse than destroying a subset.
You have not heard it here first, it is a pretty old belief of the environmental movement that essentially destroying the entire planet is the worst thing we can possibly do and the main foe in trying to stop it is manipulative mass marketing. No one of note is making the case we should destroy the planet, and therefore the only cause of our actual planet destroying activity is the manipulative mass marketing techniques that lead people to do what they believe they shouldn't.
Quoting Echarmion
I am not interested in your judgement; nothing you have so far posted leads me to believe I should seek your advice on any particular subject nor that you are debating in good faith with a genuine reflection upon any of the conversations you interject yourself within.
I mean "mental break down" in the trivial cognitive sense that changing core beliefs is to "break down" those beliefs, but also in the social sense that so doing may lead people to accuse you of suffering a "mental break down" regardless of how you feel about it, while also the very real risk of, not in the sense of a disease, the "feeling of mental breakdown" when reviewing core beliefs. I do not mean "mental breakdown" in the sense of insanity; we are in agreement there.
I'm sorry if you've had some bad experiences with psychologists, but accusing us of complicity in genocide is not ok.
I have no experience with psychologists; I avoid them for reasons that maybe pretty clear.
As a privileged corporate executive I am, in any case, immune from state interference in my personal life, insofar as I don't break any laws, and I am also, in any case, immune from the "call out culture" you are trying to engage in.
I'm not about to fire myself for being called out on controversial "not ok" statements, so there's no use engaging in such theatrics.
Which is why corporate executive life is the life for me, it is the only position in capitalist society where you don't have to censor yourself.
Quoting Isaac
I can make whatever accusations I want. What matters is if those accusations are true.
The global economic system is global, fully integrated with China as "the world's factory", and carrying out destruction on a before unimaginable scale.
Academics have not only the knowledge and the time to understand how this global system functions, they are the group most responsible for creating it, and a group that can most easily undertake "non-violent" actions with disproportionate leverage (a large scale academic strike could not be ignored, cannot be easily solved with scabs off the street, and would bring about rapid policy changes).
Since academics have the knowledge to understand the global system, have the skills and time to organize themselves, have actions available to disproportionately affect policy, have a supposed dedication to truth and justice, and they do not use their power, but primarily benefit from the global system, therefore they are responsible, perhaps the most responsible of any group, for the destruction the global system has brought to our planet and our people. With knowledge comes responsibility.
That is what we hippies call 'a heavy trip' you're laying on us. It took me right back to the early seventies at uni, where, in the final year all my fellow revolutionaries ditched the flares for sharp suits, cut their hair to conventional length and started going to interviews with ICI and applying for teacher-training courses. And the story was that they were going to 'fight for change from within. Perhaps they believed it; I never did.
I suggest that what is needed is despair. In 1968 the doomsday clock was at 2 minutes to midnight, and I did not expect to become old. And now there is a similar despair amongst the youth that their world will remain inhabitable. But as long as academics think academia inhabitable, they will not despair of it enough to risk their lives and livelihoods.
How about complicity in torture?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30792344/
Yes, that too. By what ethical standard does studying some subject somehow make me complicit in the actions of others studying the same subject?
Are engineers complicit in the destruction caused by the weapons manufactured by one sub-group?
Why psychology, why not the whole of Human sciences (of which psychology is just a branch? The whole of biology (of which human sciences is just a branch), or all science (of which biology is just a branch), or all human investigation (of which science is just a branch)?
If we're to condemn people for the actions of others with whom they share some common field then we might as well condemn us all, we're not that far removed from each other.
Psychologists did a lot more than "study" torture. If you're unfamiliar with the voluminous body of evidence of the complicity of the psychological profession in the US's torture regime, you're ignorant. Did you read the link I provided? Why don't you Google around? It was a major scandal in the psychological community and still is. If you claim to be a professional in that discipline, I urge you to repair your ignorance of this topic ASAP. I've been following this issue since Bush (and Pelosi and other prominent Democrats) turned the US into a torture regime. It reflects very badly on the psychology profession.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/psychologists-are-facing-consequences-for-helping-with-torture-its-not-enough/2017/10/13/2756b734-ad14-11e7-9e58-e6288544af98_story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/jul/10/us-torture-doctors-psychologists-apa-prosecution
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dangerous-ideas/201412/the-complicity-psychologists-in-cia-torture
Quoting Isaac
I'm doing no such thing. The profession's own ethical standards are at issue and the evidence is clear. Educate yourself. I'm not stating a controversial position. I'm stating established fact.
I didn't say otherwise. I said that the only thing I have in common with them is that we study the same subject. I'm asking why that makes me complicit in their actions. Restating what their actions were is irrelevant. I'm asking you about the ethical principle you're applying by which I'm complicit in the activities of those with whom I share nothing more than a common area of study.
Why, for example, does commonality in a broad field of study imply moral complicity where commonality of study in, say, politics, does not morally tie the peace activist to the activities of violent fascists? Both study politics and use that study to further their activities.
Quoting fishfry
I'm neither a member of the APA nor do I have any affiliation with them. It's ridiculous to suggest that one country's professional organisation at one point in history represents the entire global field for all time.
The British Psychological Society...
Fucking Americans. There are other countries in the world you know. Why don't you educate yourself about them before making your next neo-colonialist assumption that American institutions represent the whole fucking world.
Right you are. I was referring to American psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and good old all-American torture. USA! USA! USA!
Point is, my experience kinda flies in the face of boethius’s account. No psychologist of any kind is trying to tell me I’m crazy for not being able to put up with this bullshit capitalist world or trying to make me shut up and deal with it. I’m the one looking for help in dealing with it, and they always tell me I’m doing admirably and the problem is with my circumstances, not with me. But of course they can’t fix those circumstances; it’s not like a therapist can buy me a house or something.
Yes, but she didn't immediately strap on an AK47 and storm the White House for you, so she's basically just a capitalist shill!
Quoting Pfhorrest
Hardly surprising as
Quoting boethius
It would seem there's no 'account' at all, just some fantasy being played out where psychologists are agents of the deep state - we're hoping to secure the film rights.
Quoting fishfry
You need help with your sociopathic attitude. I'm going to recommend a course of increasing civil unrest, demonstration and finally the overthrow of your fascist oppressors. If that doesn't help you can come back next month and we'll put you on Benzos.
Thanks for coming for the ride!
Yes, the change from within strategy has clearly been unsuccessful. Of course it can work but invariably leads to getting fired as soon as the institution realizes it's working.
Quoting unenlightened
Definitely, academics need to "adult up" and realize there is no point teaching the young to manage a world that cannot plausibly be argued will be there. There's not even any plausible jobs now, so I'm not sure what their apologetics even consists of today, justifying why these "lefty professors" go through the motions anyway ... ah yes, the money, I agree there.
Well, why don't you show us the way? What is it the world of the
Quoting boethius
is doing that's not just going through the motions for the money.
What the hell are you talking about? I never said "deep state agents".
You seem to be going off the rails into some fantasy version of this conversation.
Psychologists are agents of the state because they need state license to practice psychology (whether clinical or research) and therefore must conform to state policy to get and maintain such license. They represent state authority when dealing with individual patients or research subjects (far more so, when doing so with state and/or state proxi corporate subsidy).
PhD is a token of the state. In return for that token certain actions and inactions are expected.
I am referring to academic psychologists and clinical psychologists, both, of whom, cannot "do their work" without the state. I have already explained that they are selected because their beliefs conform to state policy. An illegitimate state will select for beliefs that help maintain an illegitimate state.
Of course, this does not apply to simply anyone that has merely studied psychology, but only those engaging in state activity.
Undergraduate students I would agree are not, or then barely so, agents of the state, they are merely filled with (again in an illegitimate state) state propaganda. You can verify this because if you poke them it spills out on the floor.
Interesting. Talk me through the licensing process for research in the UK. I'm concerned I might have been seriously breaking some rules for the past 18 years.
Quoting boethius
In what way do they differ from your own work in that respect? Are you independent of the state somehow? That would truly be a remarkable feat and an account I'd love to hear.
Quoting boethius
You are confusing 'explaining' with 'delerious ranting'. Explaining involves evidence and a reasonable sequence of cause and effect.
Yes, if it is agreed that all actions against a illegitimate state are justifiable in principle, that all that is remained to be analysed is what actions are effective we can have that conversation in a new thread.
Quoting Isaac
I have already said I am an agent of the state as a conscript.
I am also an agent of the state as a corporate executive. From time to time I de facto represent the state and state policy in diplomatic engagements, and, most importantly, I receive state subsidy to carry out state policy.
The modern corporations are extensions of state power, they cannot even formally exist without the state, are the primary beneficiary of the state judiciary, police force, infrastructure, defense activity etc.
I am not an important agent of the state; the state never sits down and says "we need boethius to go do this or that", but I am far more an agent of the state than the restaurant waitress or then the conscript that is unable to evaluate state policy and cannot be credibly said to be lending his or her agency to the state (this is not my case).
As I have already stated, I have no problem living in and being an agent of the state in a legitimate state, which, to me, means majority rule with credible safeguards against the interference of both money and propaganda in political process.
I will advise my fellow citizens that there are possibly even better ways of social organization worth considering, but I am content and grateful with what I already have.
Everything hinges on state legitimacy; that is the central issue.
So why not set your own house in order before embarking on a rant about some other group of people who's methods and restrictions you're clearly completely unfamiliar with, and over whom you have no influence? Why isn't this a rant about the role of the corporate executive in propping up illegitimate states, you'd know a lot more about the subject, could actually enact any ideas which arose and can influence others in the same field.
As it is, it just sounds like an attempt to pin the blame on anyone but yourself.
Quoting boethius
Where, in non-clinical psychology, does the state dictate research policy? Which psychology policy document has the state been in executive control of, and which sections of it represent restrictions based on state policy?
I have already stated that the mechanism is the state selecting for people who already believe in state policy, most importantly of all that the state is legitimate.
In a legitimate state, this isn't a problem: the state is legitimate and selects for people who believe this true thing.
In a illegitimate state, there is a problem: the state is illegitimate and selects for people who deny this reality.
The state is not by definition bad, only extremely dangerous. Handle with care.
No, you stated that all psychologists (clinicaland research) need a state license to practice. I'm asking you what form that licence takes around the world and where, in it's provisions, is the requirement to uphold state policy.
Notwithstanding that. How does the state carry out this selection procedure. What is the actual mechanism? I was never asked if I thought the state was legitimate, nor was I queried in any way about its policies (directly or indirectly) at any point in my academic career. In fact, I've been quite vocal in my professional criticism of government policy and most students I've had have made Che Guevara look a bit conservative. Where in all this is the state vetting who is going to make it into academic research and by what means?
Quoting boethius
Oh those pathetic women who can’t think for themselves.
Quoting boethius
What does that mean? If you’re a corporate executive I would bet you need to censor yourself all the time. In fact I would bet you hardly know who you are anymore.
What corporate executive would not be part of this? How could you function as a corporate executive and play no part in mass marketing?
More useless anecdote, I fear, but at least its British, damnit. But one does not need a conspiracy theory. The university admin had had a lot of difficulty and the place had become associated with trouble. So they were concerned to forestal any continuation of the trouble by selecting out the trouble makers. Change is hard work, uncomfortable and uncertain. we don't like it. But even before one's first degree, never mind the PhD, 'the state' or as i tend to call it 'the status quo' selects and filters. As of course it must in the situation of educational scarcity that has been set up. Most of us have to be ignorant experiment fodder for the elite.
Quoting unenlightened
It’s ironic isn’t it, because that’s essentially what we are. We are all agents of change, we can’t help it.
Yes. Individuals are agents of change, but institutions are agents of stability. (approximately)
Quoting unenlightened
Which is why they exist. We’re not totally stupid.
Glad to hear it.
Well, my first doctoral supervisor was a paid up member of the communist party so anecdote for anectode we're 1-all. Next shot?
If you go to a state and threaten state policy, you will be stopped if not removed from the country, if not arrested and placed in prison.
Go to China and verify if they are really "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation".
Maybe this premise is true, or untrue. If it is true, you should be able to conduct research to demonstrate that, and perhaps, with sociologist colleagues, further investigate if this "lack of proper socialisation" is likewise true or untrue, in order to help verify or then help correct Chinese state policy.
Now, insofar as you accept that Chinese state power would not allow you do to that (try to get to the truth as a so called "scientist" to verify your own "impressions"), then insofar as you can "research around the world" it is, in its essential character, a state license to uphold state policy wherever you go.
Furthermore, insofar as you, or any in your profession anywhere in the world, lend your credibility to Chinese state agents as well as communities and institutions that help train Chinese state agents, then you are party to the crimes of the Chinese state.
If you lend someone your credibility, you receive in return their moral culpability.
Likewise, insofar as you cite in your research any research conducted in China or by agents or proxies of China, you are extending Chinese state power.
Quoting boethius
Do you mean question or threaten?
Edit: I’m sorry, I realise I just don’t understand what you’re talking about.
You're equating the state and the entirety of society. Under this framework, anyone is selected, even criminals are the result of negative selection by the "status quo". Such immensely broad frameworks have the tendency to go off into the weeds, notably with unfounded pars pro toto substitutions.
Here, your usage of "the elite" is questionable, because you have set up the state as all encompassing, yet somehow there is an elite controlling it from the outside as an "experiment".
HSBC for example, is a colonial artefact. The voting system dates back to a time of mass illiteracy and no mass or electronic communication. Mark an X in the box. You will think of examples of archaic practices.
One of the institutions is the marketplace and the economy. Property law and taxes are designed for a world that is not automated. The limitations of speed of transport and communication set constrictions in trade that have now gone. But the banks, the foundational arbiters of the economy were largely founded to support the Slave Trade, and are substantially the same institutions today.
The abolition of slavery was the last major change to property law, if one excepts the allowing of married women to own property in their own right, and the massive extension of territorial waters and sale of mineral and fishing rights therein. (I may have missed something, correct me if so).
So the institutions of slavery remain though slavery is gone. So apart from the fact that the British government has only recently finished paying off the loans it took out to compensate the slave owners (and of course since they are not immortal, their inheritors) for their losses, one might wonder how the banking system we inherit works for, say the inheritors of the North Wales slate quarry workers, whose industry was developed by the slave owning families into a massive and highly exploitative industry.
No, you absolutely will not. There are very few states left in the world where all forms of threat to state policy results in expatriation or imprisonment. Some will, others won't.
Besides which, I asked you about your claim that
Quoting boethius
Rambling on about China for a few paragraphs is not an answer.
Quoting boethius
But we don't 'lend our credibility to Chinese state agents'. Why would we? We might help train them, but I think its arguable that spending three years in a free democracy is as likely to promote the decline of support for the regime as it is to produce willing enablers of it.
But again, you've deflected from the difficult questions. Why psychology? Why academia? Anyone buying Chinese goods is directly funding the Chinese regime. Do you boycott all Chinese products? Anyone trading with China is supporting the regime. Are your supply lines and those of all your colleagues in the world of corporate executives free from Chinese products and services?
It's unarguably the case that institutions (being slow to adapt) tend, systemically, to support social structures more suited to the society at the time of their foundation than the one we have now. Banks are a good example.
That doesn't make it at all helpful to start throwing around accusations that some specific institution is a particularly pernicious example of this tendency purely on the grounds that it might be.
Some institutions have adapted better than others, so the mere existence of trend is not sufficient grounds to accuse any given institution of being at the worse (rather than better) end of this scale.
Yes, more or less. The state guarantees the law, and the law governs every aspect of social life from the voltage of electricity supplies to the allowable chastisement of your children.
OK. I' try not to do that. Thanks for the heads up.
Some institutions are banned by the state.Others are heavily regulated, and some heavily influence the functioning of the state. Life is annoyingly complicated. In the latter category, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge deserve a mention. there are even more of their graduates in government than there are in comedy
You have a complete inability to participate in the conversation at a cognitive level.
I said three possibilities: "stopped, removed, or imprisoned". If the state feels your activity is threatening there will be a response, whether a legitimate or illegitimate state.
In a legitimate state, the state is not threatened by legitimate research into the mechanism and consequence of state policy and power.
However, the legitimate state will still stop you from conducting research it views as threatening. If you engage in human experimentation the state views as illegal and unethical, the state will stop you, arrest you, or then send you back to where you came from. The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation.
Now, in a illegitimate state, if you carried out research to investigate and expose unethical human experimentation, then the state would feel threatened because it does not identify with its citizenry and requires what people elsewhere say is "unethical research" in order to understand and control its citizenry, and would stop you, arrest you or send you back to where you came from.
If the state is not interested in your research, it is because the state does not feel threatened by your research.
However, more generally, research conforms to state policy because research is funded by the state or proxies to the state. Researchers who insist on not conforming may have some degree of toleration by the state due to the potential for blow back of "interference in supposed objective researchers"; however, there is always a point beyond which the state will directly interfere, and, more importantly, what the state learns from such experience is that it needs to better filter out such people from getting the token of credible expertise to begin with.
The legitimate state learns it must better filter out people willing to break "humane ethical principles" in human experimentation.
The illegitimate state learns it must better filter out people unwilling to break such principles, and even more so people willing to "make a scene" about such unethical behaviour and institutional design in a general (both in terms of human experimentation and other things).
Quoting Isaac
You say "anywhere in the world" and I use the example of China and your own claim that "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation" and your ability to verify that "impression" by scientific research, and you view this as "rambling".
Amazing, truly amazing.
Quoting Isaac
This is off topic for this thread, as the OP is about mental health under a illegitimate state, so I will make a new thread and make my case that insofar as a community of psychologists conceive of themselves as part of a global community that includes China and derives their expert legitimacy, in part, from the global nature of the community, then they are both directly enabling Chinese state agency by supporting, collaborating with and training Chinese state agents, but also covering for Chinese state policy with their credibility, insofar as they don't vocally denounce it and cut community ties and are willing to say statements like "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation", which, of course, is only "scientifically" supported by the "evidence" provided by Chinese state agents carrying out the policy.
It's patently absurd to claim that the law governs every aspect of social life. That isn't even the case in extreme cases like North Korea, and it certainly isn't the case in the vast majority of states. The law cannot possibly hope to adress, much less effectively govern, the multitude of social interactions we engage in.
Quoting boethius
That's a nice bit of circular logic. The state will stop your from doing things it views as threatening. And it views as threatening that which it stops you from doing.
Quoting boethius
An interesting take on the "no true scotsman". If the nonconformity isn't adressed, that's just because it's not truely threatening.
Quoting Echarmion
You are quite right. there is no state control over what we write here, for example, except of course in those states that block sites like this. And other states that would block it or otherwise sanction us if they didn't like what was being said. But I seem to recall not very long ago the state, or a state, that some of us might want to call legitimate, putting pressure on Facebook, to regulate content. Patently absurd.
You said every aspect of social life. You didn't say "some aspects" because that'd be a trivial claim not worth writing about. Please tell me about the law that regulates what you talk about with your significant other at the dinner table.
Sure. It's the riot act. If I talk too loud, the police will be called to the restaurant. There are things you can do that the state allows. And the law specifies what is allowed and what is not allowed. There is nothing that is not either legal or illegal. So at home, as long as I am not disturbing the neighbours and as long as my talk does not constitute coercive control, or blackmail, or sedition, or incitement to violence or terrorism, I can say whatever I like. In other words, what i can and cannot say to my wife over the dinner table is enshrined in law. Got it?
Too late.
Quoting unenlightened
Not so complicated that we can't, when accusing one institution of being complicit in class oppression, racial segregation, genocide...produce just the tiniest shred of actual evidence beyond insinuation and conspiracy-theorist level speculation.
Quoting unenlightened
And this affects policy how? Those institutions influenced future politicians how? What laws have Oxford and Cambridge psychology professors had instigated which would not have otherwise happened?
This is exactly what I mean by presumptive insinuation. It's like noting that someone used to give to the homeless and with a nod and a wink we're all supposed to know that means they'll be at the head of the next communist revolution.
Yes, Oxford and Cambridge are over represented in government. The next necessary stage of the process is to establish if that's had any effect and to what extent.
It's not circular, it's simply the definition of "what you do when you see a threat: you act with regard to that threat".
If you threaten my life, I will act; if you threaten my business, I will act. My action will be based on my evaluation of the threat and what is an justifiable and effective response.
What is "ethical research", or otherwise permissible research, in a given state is the state policy about what kind of research it views as non-threatening. Research the state subsidizes in a given state, is that state policy of what kind of research it views as useful, under one argument or another (why else would it fund it).
Quoting Isaac
Class relations are not, in their essential character, conspiratorial. The class of people called "slaves" in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary America was not a speculative thing; it really existed. The "institution of slavery" is in reference to real institutions that really existed to maintain slavery.
Nothing has transpired politically since then to assume that similar structures of oppression relating classes of people to institutions, to one degree or another of oppression, can simply no longer exist, and, if they do, would have nothing to do with the institutions that we may find to be operating in any particular nation or globally; or that we may simply carve out broad exceptions to such query because it is inconvenient to the enjoyment of class privilege.
You may argue a particular institution is not involved in maintaining oppressive relations, you may argue a particular institution is involved, yes, but "on the whole" contributing more to liberty than oppression (that the left hand washes the right). I am completely open to such claims and such analysis.
But, if the claim is that institutions are by nature, or at least Western institutions, incapable of involvement in oppression, then it seems you have a psychological problem of interpreting reality. Unfortunately, there's no pill I am licensed to provide that fixes this level of denial.
And how is this related to [I]what[/I] you are talking about? Are you going to argue the law governs dining etiquette because you're not allowed to stab your guests with a fork?
Quoting unenlightened
There are, however, things that the law simply does not talk about. And even among those things that the law talks about, there are provisions that are practically enforced, and those that do not. It's easy enough to set up a hypothetical law that, say, applies to every conversation ("seditious talk is illegal"). But for that law to actually govern, you'd have to enforce it rigidly enough to actually influence every conversation.
Quoting unenlightened
That only works if you think that the law implicitly governs everything it doesn't explicitly govern, but then your conclusion is also your premise.
So you should have no trouble providing evidence of cases where this has happened, together with an explanation of the mechanism that was used.
Quoting boethius
Again, with examples please. From a range of countries.
Quoting boethius
Once more with actual evidence. You seem to somehow be confused into thinking that because you can come up with a possible state of affairs that state of affairs must therefore be the case. This is not a test of your imagination, it a test of what is actually the case, for which you need to provide actual evidence.
Quoting boethius
I said 'anywhere in the world' by way of asking for proof that such processes were endemic. Picking the most oppressive state in the world as an example hardly makes your case.
Quoting boethius
That was not my claim, it was @Echarmion's. You know, the one whom you earlier accused of not reading the posts carefully.
Fortunate then, that it isn't.
You are telling me that you know of no cases in your field where people's research or practices that have been stopped by the state throughout the history of psychology? By stopped, I mean either a refusal of a request (refusing to sanction the requested actions) or then intervening afterwards due to (from the perspective of the state, deceptive description of the requested permissions) nor are you aware of changes to state policy that made previous kinds of actions no longer permissible.
I'll provide examples if you are really so intent on claiming ignorance and demonstrating you are a total hack and fool before whoever is following this conversation.
Quoting Isaac
I never said the process was "endemic".
You clearly do not have the cognitive capabilities to follow the conversation, one such cognitive ability being the "reading of words".
I will, from now on, be simply pointing out the strawmen you create and repeating your lack of cognitive skills needed to debate, at least in good faith, each time I see it. I will no longer bother to go through the exercise of brushing aside your strawmen for completeness sake; if you want to surround yourself with an army of straw, that's only kindle for the burning of your own soul.
Quoting Isaac
Ah, I am unable to tell you two apart, I will be more careful. Fools seem all the same to me, lacking any distinguishing personality.
So, what is your view on the re-education camps?
Let's continue the conversation from there.
Sorry, I missed that statute. You are not the thought police, and you are not the boss of me. There are rumours of an old boy's network. They don't advertise. I don't have to prove every fucking word, and you don't have to take any notice.
Yes, of course. The law against murder or assault governs the whole of your life, and the whole of the country. You can of course do whatever you like, if that is allowed.
You weren't making an historical point. Your claim was the all of psychology is complicit in Chinese genocide and that we all are agents of the state. I can certainly think of disastrous routes psychology has previously taken. I can think of a time when only white men were allowed to study it too, does that somehow prove the institution is still sexist (despite now having more females than males)? I'm asking for current examples in numerous countries (not just the US and China) where research practices have been stopped by the state on the grounds of current policy. I don't have anything whatsoever to do with the state. If I want to carry out some research, at no point in time do I even have to consult the current government, and at no point in my entire career have I even heard of a government agent stopping anyone's research.
Quoting boethius
I presumed you were capable of judging what the term meant in context. You said that all psychologists were agents of the state because they needed state permission to carry out research. I'm using endemic in place of 'all'.
Quoting boethius
It's painful enough to go through the process of dismantling your egregious claims about a subject you clearly have no knowledge of. I'm not about to start another voluntarily.
But sometimes people don't. It's not a law of nature. You can guess what will probably happen, but for that you need data.
Quoting boethius
But this of course doesn't actually tell me anything about your response. It can equally explain any outcome and therefore is useless as an analysis.
Quoting boethius
That's not at all a given. A state might not have enough power to fully control what is considered permissible or ethical.
Quoting boethius
That's a useful heuristic (whatever the state funds it probably considers useful), but it's just a heuristic. There might be other considerations in play, since decisionmaking in a state isn't monolithic and a state might have to negotiate with other actors.
Quoting unenlightened
It governs a specific action with a specific intent. Sure, you can play semantics and define terms any way you like. But if you want to analyze how law actually affects a society, simply ignoring when and how people actually incorporate their idea of the law into their decisions is probably not a good start.
You wrote a post, in a thread about the modern institution of psychology, which was entirely about how banking is still working for the benefit of prior slave owners. Either the insinuation is that the institution of psychology might be similarly afflicted (in line with the rest of the thread, and your previous posts - class oppression, racial segregation, genocide, torture...), or your post was a bizarre off-topic intervention without any purpose.
If the latter, then I suggest that you take a little more care over the the possible misinterpretations of your odd posting habits.
If the former then yes, you absolutely do have to prove every fucking word. You don't get to just accuse an entire institution of such offensive activities or attitudes and then just deflect any attempt to defend ourselves with a faux show of horror that we should dare ask for the evidence.
Make me, big boy.
That's exactly what I'm trying to do here. Show you how unfair it is to make such unpleasant insinuations and then dismiss any attempt at defense as unreasonable. Show you how offended I am that the careers of myself and my colleagues working with some of the most troubled and disadvantaged groups in society have been reduced to a simplistic conspiracy theory without even bothering to check if any of it is true.
So yes, I'm trying to make you. The fact that it's not working is a reflection on you, not me.
Shit man, get over yourself. You sound like a Victorian schoolmarm. You are just a joke now.
I am interested in hearing more on your thoughts about Stoicism and similar philosophies like Buddhism. I wanted that to be the focus of the conversation I was trying to start, but you barely said anything about it.
I gather from this comment that you are saying that if one believes in the Stoic metaphysics of determinism and inability to effect change, then one will attain the Stoic state of ataraxia, which is a positive state of mental health.
But I was asking more, what do you think about trying to maintain ataraxia, regardless of any metaphysical beliefs, in a context of social injustice? Like when an average person who themselves has very little social power, exercises that tiny power they have as best they can, and then just tries to stay “stoic”, i.e. as calm and unperturbed as possible, despite the injustice that still continues around them.
Do you see that as a good thing or a bad thing? And do you not see at least some practices of modern clinical psychology/psychiatry as aiming to facilitating something like that?
I'd like to illustrate this a little. Alan Turing was a homosexual who was arrested and faced with the choice of chemical castration or imprisonment. He chose the former, and soon after committed suicide. Whether that was recorded as a cure or not I don't know. In this case it was not a matter of tossing anything aside, but of being unable to conform to the standard of sanity.
It is hard to imagine if you have not experienced it, but the depth of opprobrium of being called "a queer" at the school I went to was far far worse than being called mad; far worse than being called a traitor; it demanded a fight immediately and absolutely. It was illegal of course - Gross Indecency and Buggery were the crimes, I was on the jury once for a trial (the case collapsed, because the vital witness was too ashamed to give evidence). This attitude survives somewhat in the prison population, where 'nonce' as a term of abuse has slowly and incompletely migrated from homosexual to pedophile as the law and the obsessions of the public have changed. Some people do not still distinguish.
So it was in a sense a kindness for psychiatrists to maintain that these people could not help themselves, and needed help, not punishment. Psychiatry becomes an agent of the state on one side, but an agent of mitigation of the state on the other.
We still have places of incarceration for the criminally insane, where the psychiatrists are agents of the state in the same way that prison officers are.
So it would be interesting to me at least to look at some accounts of the pioneers of Gay liberation, who must have gone through this 'mental breakdown' of being unable to sustain their 'proper' self-disgust.
But there must have already been, as it were, a semi-secret counter-culture, of meeting places and signs, and indeed there was an argot, that was used in Beyond our Ken and Round the Horn (classic radio comedies from the 50's & 60's. And of course show business was a hotbed of 'luvvies' and still is, (because you had to act normal to survive).
Your example doesn't illustrate the point in the slightest. The point was
Quoting boethius
How does your example show where psychology got involved to prevent the breaking down of an old structure to build a new one. How does it show philosophy helping in that endeavour?
All your example has shown is that the beliefs of society as a whole meant that people like Turing grew up denying their own reality. This caused him such distress that ending his life was preferable (for an instant) to continuing in those circumstances. Some people in society helped him a bit (including perhaps a few psychiatrists, who, as you say, may have taken the edge off some of the abuse people like him might otherwise have suffered), other people made his life a living hell.
Where in all that does it bring anything to Boethius's utterly ludicrous point that psychology prevents new mental structures toward truth while philosophy encourages them?
The removal of draconian anti-homosexual laws and treatments involved psychiatrists like Laing and Szasz, philosophers like Foucault, psychologists like Cooper and Antonucci. It also involved a lot of ordinary activists, lawyers, doctors and journalists.
The fight against such removal, as well as the creation and maintenance of these pernicious structures in the first place, likewise involved a lot of psychiatrists, psychologists, philosophers, activists, lawyers, doctors and journalists.
So all that's been demonstrated here is that there used to be draconian structures in society which denied the reality of homosexuality and then later they were broken down. Blaming one academic field for them and claiming another is responsible for their removal is beyond stupid.
We might well profit by examining psychology's role in maintaining such structures - and we did. But the people who largely did that were psychologists themselves because they know the field and are best placed to plan a way forward. All social structures and institutions have a history of systemically maintaining oppression. All also have a history of fighting that oppression from within their own field, as well as benefiting from influences from outside their field.
This absurd notion that 'psychology' as a whole is responsible for anything, or that 'psychologists' are complicit in something beyond that which each and every person is responsible for and complicit in, has no justification.
Yes, I also rather discuss the actual OP.
My argument is that philosophy cannot be approached from a point of view of mental health.
It simply doesn't make sense to say "I will become Buddhist to improve my mental health through meditation" or "I will become a Christian to improve my mental health through forgiveness and church community" or "I will become a Stoic to improve my mental health through ataraxia".
We cannot define mental health nor what is "good and bad" is in terms of mental states without a philosophical position in the first place.
For instance, a Christian will view "guilt" as a healthy motivation towards accepting moral failing and asking forgiveness. Other philosophies may view the same "guilt" as unhealthy. Even within the Christian community there will be disagreement as to how far exactly this "guilt" should go, exactly what it should be and for what it should be felt.
I say concluding that stoicism is actually true will improve mental health, not as a comment on the psychological process of truth conclusion, but because committing to the truth of some philosophy provides the basis of good and bad upon which mental states can be evaluated. From the perspective of assuming stoicism is true, it is mentally healthy to accept this as true, since it's true; likewise, for any other philosophy.
Now, one might be tempted to say one must not only commit to the philosophy and that philosophy must be "actually true" to improve health, but that would be to miss the point. In so saying, we are positing that a characteristic of the "true true" is that it improves mental health; but if we just finished saying we need the true-true in the first place to evaluate mental health in the first place, then there is no outside objective perspective (such as the psychologist deceives people into believing exists and that they are some sort of expert on this deception) upon which an evaluation of mental health apart from belief about good and bad can be established. Such an erroneous approach also leads to the unintelligible perspective that "feeling" (as some sort of supposed objective measure of mental health) is some sort of barometer for truth, rather than the arguments that support such a truth conclusion; this is dangerous not only because there is no reason to assume feelings inform us of what is true, but even more dangerous because there is no reason to assume that the worst lies do not create the best feelings from this fictitious objective mental health perspective.
In order to evaluate one's mental health, one must first conclude one's feelings and thoughts are "bad" or then "good", and how to go from the first to the latter. The psychologist wants to avoid the obvious philosophical implications of such an evaluation within which they have no epistemic authority, and change the conversation towards merely what appears to themselves (the key point) as good and bad and take the patient, and even society as a whole, through meandering maze of confusing discourse and, wherever possible to make a buck for themselves and their partners in this scheme, a pharmacology haze.
If a psychologist really is an agent of a illegitimate state -- or then, again a key point, there is debate either way -- and the psychologist does not either advertise themselves as an agent of an illegitimate state or then invite the debate and defend their own case on equal epistemic footing, the psychologist is simply maintaining their own delusion, the delusion of the patient about the psychologist, and the delusion of society about psychology as a whole. They may say "it's good to be deluded about these things and avoid pointing towards these delusions" but that's a delusional thing to say as well.
With regard to stoicism, therefore, it makes much more sense the simple question "is Stoicism true?" and "If so, how should a stoic consider things and what should a Stoic do about such considerations today?".
It certainly did. And there was and still is a great deal of resistance, and denigration of Laing and Szasz, indeed they are more heroes of anti-psychiatry as you no doubt know. And at the time, they were not on the course of psychology I studied, but very much on the student controlled revolutionary alternative course. So the academic institution of psychology that I was part of at the time, was very much "involved to prevent the breaking down of an old structure to build a new one." And was doing it by dismissing those very people you cite now as being at the forefront of the change that you now want to claim credit for in the name of academic psychology.
Indeed it was, as was true of basically every other institution at the time. Philosophy too had its time when it perpetuated old structures. Which directly contradicts boethius's point that psychology does one thing whilst philosophy does another.
Institutions seem to perpetuate the social norms of the time, what's more, there's a time lag such that most institutions will be slightly behind the new social norms, slightly resistant to change.
None of this supports or illustrates the point being made by boethius, which is that psychology, as a whole, serves some state instituted function which other institutions (like philosophy) do not.
This is absolutely patently false.
All institutions suffer from the same effect (its not just psychology).
The effect is mediated mostly by the make up of society (and sub classes of society). It is not generally mediated by the state (except in places like China).
People within those institutions are just as much part of the solution as they are part of the problem, they are not morally complicit just by association, they are, more often than not, the very same people who bring about a change in their institution.
So out of all the crazy claims that have been made on this thread, all were left with any actual evidence of is the idea that institutions in general tend to support cultural norms and are a bit slow to change when cultural norms change. Academic Psychology was one of those.
So if we can cut the crap about how all psychologists are morally culpable for Chinese genocide we can actually have a discussion about how the institution's previous resistance to change has played a part in how mental health issues were poorly addressed.
I don't speak for boethius, obviously. But there is no question that psychiatry exercises a coercive function by incarceration and forcible treatment that cannot be divorced from the state as it is incorporated of necessity into the justice system. And that was the main criticism of Szasz, as you know, which has not been addressed anywhere as far as I am aware.
Academic philosophy may have influence, but it does not have the same direct involvement with the affairs of the state. Laing should have been on my abnormal psychology reading list and wasn't, and psychiatrists are psychologists as well as medics, so the connections are direct. Philosophy degrees do not contribute to anyone's right to incarcerate or forcibly treat anyone.
I agree. Which is why, right at the very first mention of this whole issue I sought to clarify if we were talking about psychiatriy or psychology as a whole. I reject the idea that simply because psychiatrists are psychologist this somehow implicates the whole of psychology in their actions. Not even the whole of psychiatry is implicated as Szasz and Laing prove, and we do study both now (on some courses by name, on others by their effects), so academic psychology cannot be held responsible either.
I my opinion we still do incarcerate and, more prevelently, medicate far more people than we should. But I disagree that the main driver of this is the state or academic psychology. There are two main drivers; the pharmaceutical industry and the need for crowd-control in educational establishments. Neither are really state driven. Both are heavily tied to the needs of corporations to make profits.
Psychology degrees, at least in their modern incarnation, do not teach anything about who to incarcerate. Only a small subset teach about who to medicate. Virtually all of them (to my knowledge) teach the entire argument about over-medicalisation of societally instigated conditions. It's actually the institutions outside of academia (schools and the NHS) which now produce the most force to overmedicate.
I think our disagreement here has become a matter of degree. Obviously psychology is diverse, and anything I say about it is a generalisation rather than a universalisation.
Quoting Isaac
I agree. Crudely, the chemical cosh is cheaper than real care or real justice. But hang on. This is still an indictment of psychiatry. If it bases its treatments on the requirements of schools for order in the classroom, then its claim to validity is lost. This is exactly what the complaint of the thread is, children are drugged for the convenience of the school, and we call it ADHD. Not treatment of illness but social control.
But it doesn't. It bases its treatments on a need to medicate extreme hyperactivity (in the case of ADHD). We could argue whether a need ever exists even in the most extreme cases, I'd probably be inclined to say no myself, but it's a difficult issue. The point is, if there's a need to treat anyone at all, clinical psychology as an academic discipline will have cause to investigate drugs that can do so. But they do not, ever, as an academic discipline determine the people who should be given such medication. That's done by the pharmaceutical company psychologists, NICE, and the psychologists on the ground. The academic discipline as a whole (its teaching, its rules, its guidance) doesn't say specifically.
Quoting unenlightened
The complaint of the thread is that all psychologists everywhere in the world are complicit in Chinese genocide because they study the same topic, and that they are all, worldwide, agents of the state because they need state permission to carry out their research. Don't try to ameliorate the foam-flecked insanity of the original rant by pretending it's really about some nuance of the specific involvement of psychiatry in the oppressive education and criminal systems.
But leaving aside the delusion of the OP and taking this new point, then yes, I agree with you that psychiatry is complicit in that it provides tools it has good reasons to believe will be misused to subdue children for mere convenience.
That complicity is limited though. Whilst I rarely work with children, my wife has been a child psychologist for nearly 20 years and in our experience of the field, the overwhelming majority of psychologists are opposed to this kind of treatment, many are opposed even to the very existence of the drug. The BPS has very strong guidance on medicating behavioural problems. Unless you think psychology ought to have its own police force I don't see how you can hold us accountable for a failure to comply with the guidance.
Maybe we should ban any medication for behavioural problems. I'd seriously like to see such a motion discussed at the BPS, but their evidence to the 2018 Nice review on medication for ADHD was already preceded by quite a robust debate in which the possibility was mooted. Not where I'd like us to be, but hardly gagged shills of the state the OP describes.
I'm glad to hear this. But I do think the BPS should police the practice of its members, as the BMA should, as for that matter the RIBA should, come to that. It's implied by that 'we'. A football club is responsible for the behaviour of the team and the fans.
One of the questions I'm not clear about in relation to the op is how to tell a legitimate state from an illegitimate one. One cannot inspect the parents' marriage certificate. So I tend to at least question, or not take for granted, the legitimacy of every state. Fair elections, free press, educated population, these help but may not guarantee...
And then there is the dispute about responsibility. Am I responsible for psychology as a psychology graduate? I rather think I am, even though I do not practice, and never have, my education makes me responsible in the same way that education and a democratic system makes the people responsible for the government. It's a broad view, that if I deny responsibility for anything I know about, I am irresponsible unless I have done what I reasonably can about it. That's probably controversial...
Possibly, but I think it would need more government support to do something like that, membership is still not mandatory. As a token gesture though, I'm generally in favour of organisations taking a more serious stance about their membership, I just don't think it would have much effect without legislation to back it up. And then aren't we just more beholden to state intervention than we were before? I can't see a way that a professional organisation can meaningfully control the behaviour of its members and yet remain independent of the state (the only source of legitimate force).
Quoting unenlightened
As you know from some of our previous discussions, I'm a relativist about things like legitimacy (in the sense I think it's being used here) so a legitimate state is just one that meets your criteria, I do it on gut feeling as much as anything else.
Quoting unenlightened
This is the question I tried to ask boethius in the beginning, what his ethical framework was by which I was responsible for the actions of others on the basis of some similarities but not others. I think a wide base of responsibility is a good thing but there's absolutely nothing to be gained by self flagellation over actions that we could never reasonably have controlled or repair. There's only any point in assigning myself responsibility for those things I can properly affect...and the actions of psychologists acting on the instruction of the Chinese government ain't one of those things.
Yes I think I agree. One cannot address every issue that one becomes aware of, so If you haven't spoken or acted on the Chinese issue, well neither have I. I raise issues here, and in the past I have tried to support people with mental health issues in various ways, and point people towards what i believed to be sympathetic help. But I'm not a very good internationalist - tant pis. But perhaps somewhere in the BPS, if there isn't, there should be, a department of international relations that makes relationships with its foreign counterparts, and if the occasion arises remonstrates publicly with them. No?
You're first response is that explaining "the definition of a threat" as it's used in a sentence is circular logic. That didn't work, so now you're claiming that "threat response isn't a law of nature".
You are unable to follow this conversation, you either do not have the cognitive abilities or then are of ridiculous bad faith.
Either way, you just demonstrate to anyone who is following you are a hack and a fool.
Quoting Echarmion
That not what is at issue. It is part of my "threat identification process" to decide on some action, small or large, with regard to the threat I identify. I may misidentify a threat, I may have no effective actions available, I may at first simply think about it further, I may act immediately.
If you want to create the straw man of someone else who does absolutely nothing about threats, that understand threats to be "that which someone should do nothing about", be my guest.
It's even more ridiculous as the actual subject matter is states, and my personal example was just to illustrate what the word "threat" means. If you want to believe states are so inept as to have no threat identification process, or that such a situation is an edge of relevance to this situation, again, you simply demonstrate your inability to follow this conversation and that you are a threat and a fool.
You have said nothing of "analytical value" about my statement:
Quoting boethius
That you seem to have issue with.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, a strawman. I did not say a state has some sort of omnipotence, only that they respond to what they "feel threatened" by (could be a state agent deciding whether to file or not file a report about what they have perceived, could be just filing a report to recommend "monitor" this threat further, could be large scale mobilization and declaration of war). I say "feel threatened" because response is with regards to perception, on the individual case as with the case of a group or a state.
You do not have have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, and you are a hack and a fool.
Quoting Echarmion
Again, another strawman. I did not say the state does not need to negotiate with other actors, for instance other states (legitimate or not), its own state agents or its own.
The state does not always get what it wants. State policy does not immediately translate into reality.
The framework of this discussion is that state have policies, and the primary mechanism for selecting agents to carry out state policy is ensuring, state agents already believe in state policy when they are selected, and furthermore the primary mechanism of deciding on the vast majority of research that happens is through state subsidy.
You do not have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.
I did not say there is no negotiation that happens in such processes, nor that such mechanisms are perfect.
If you want to argue that, because of ambiguity in what state policy actually is at any given time and imperfection of mechanisms to implement that state policy, that therefore "no states exist" or then "all states are legitimate", or "states have no influence on state agents", you are welcome to start a new OP that makes such a claim.
I have also stated already said that "changing the system from within" can be done, it is just hard since institutions resisting such change will usually fire you as soon they understand what you are doing is a real threat.
Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA.
Other "trouble makers" can remain nuances and avoid pretext for firing and navigate other responses. The state learns from such experiences to increase attention to filtering out such people in the first place.
How state agents can subvert the state institutions they are involved in is a separate discussion to this OP.
In terms of mental health under an illegitimate state, the argument of the OP is that psychologists are state agents that are employed to deny the reality of the illegitimate state and to promote productive or then benign "normal" behavior with regard to state power structures; therefore, insofar as they believe the sate is legitimate when it is not, they are delusional and one should be deeply suspicious of them, individually and as a community.
A useful "heuristic", as you might say, for dealing with state agents.
Yes, one must first conclude if one is living in a legitimate or illegitimate state.
This is beyond the scope of the OP. However one decides, one cannot base such a evaluation on the authority of psychologists or other state agents (they have been selected, either way, because they believe the state is legitimate).
Therefore, political analysis precedes psychology both in terms of intellectual structure and practice. Psychologists cannot be separated away from state legitimacy and claim to be involved in some independent scientific reality.
Psychology is an afterthought to political analysis, in terms of understanding of social structure and moral evaluation of that structure.
If one concludes one is living in a legitimate state, I would argue it is reasonable to be less suspicious, though still critical, of state agents, including psychologists.
Tony Gibson was an English psychologist and anarchist. (First google result for anarchist psychologists.) As an anarchist he obviously didn’t believe the state was legitimate, but he was still a psychologist nevertheless. Which disproves your quoted statement as an absolute truth.
I’m not questioning your general thesis that (of course) the state tries to coopt the institution of psychology to it own ends, like it does every institution. Just saying that you can’t dismiss every participant in every such institution as an agent of the state. It’s not like politics where the very function of the institute is statist. There are people in every institution the state tries to coopt who don’t go along willingly if at all, and though the state tries to get rid of them when it can (of course), it’s usually not completely successful, and sometimes not very at all.
Did you know a disproportionate number of engineers get drawn into terrorist organizations? Does that make all engineers agents of terror?
The OP is about "Mental health under an illegitimate state".
I agree that Turing was not helped by psychologists, and I would argue that psychology as a whole does far more damage in such cases than the previous "criminality"; for, at least when dealt with as a matter of law, the role of state power and political and moral analysis is clear, and the homosexual can take a political stand to subvert the law and the state and, failing in this, the oppression of the state (assuming homosexuality is not immoral, which I think we agree on) is clear cut. In such a situation the psychologist is simply gaslighting homosexuals and confusing society by pretending there is a "scientific problem" with a "scientific solution", rather than a moral discussion with a political solution.
If we agree here more-or-less, you are simply adding weight to my "ludicrous point that psychology prevents new mental structures toward truth while philosophy encourages them".
The issue of homosexuality in @unenlightened's example is one of state legitimacy.
First, democratic legitimacy and the role of homosexual repression, and sexual repression more generally, in maintaining totalitarian structures. Second, moral legitimacy.
When psychologists believe a state they represent (for instance to "understand and cure homosexuality") is legitimate when it is not (more so if they believe it is not even up for debate), they are delusional and the entire practice of psychology becomes the maintenance of this central delusion.
People, under such circumstance, come to psychologists with a simple message "I am being oppressed" and the psychologist has a simple reply "sit down and shut up, let me oppress you some more". Both the psychologist and the individual, more often than not, are in delusion about this reality, but that delusion is irrelevant to the political situation and power relationship.
According to what legitimate state means to me:
In a legitimate state, the psychologist explains to the patient that peaceful means are easily available and viable for healthy engagement in political process, because this is true.
In an illegitimate state, the psychologist explains to the patient that peaceful means are easily available and viable for healthy engagement in political process, but this is a lie because it isn't true.
The idea that one is in a good social structure when one is actually in a bad social structure, is the worst and most evil possible gaslighting and "prevents new mental structures toward truth"; indeed, I would argue the most critical truth of all in terms of our relation to society and all of our actions that have any import at all.
In an illegitimate state, police (on the whole) gas and crack the heads of malcontents and resistors to dissuade them of exploring effective avenues of change to the political structure.
In an illegitimate state, psychologists (on the whole) gaslight and crack the heads of malcontents and resistors to dissuade them of exploring effective avenues of change to the political structure.
In a legitimate state (on the whole) both police and psychologists may not only do nothing to prevent change to political structure, but maybe active agents of such change themselves.
I say: we must evaluate the political situation before we can evaluate what state agents tell us.
I say: state agents are selected for certain criteria, such as belief the state is legitimate.
I do not say the state is perfect and always perfectly selects candidates who believe in state legitimacy now and forever.
There can be exceptions. If I conclude the state I am in is not legitimate, and I decide I need a psychologist anyway, I will search for psychologists attempting to subvert the state, for they potentially have a reasonable view of reality and agreement with my own morality (therefore genuinely want to accomplish what I want to accomplish, which is a better ally than someone who doesn't). Depending on the level of oppression (which is not binary but a scale or a space) such people may be easier or harder to find, but the point is my political evaluation changes completely my method of search and who I am searching for.
If I conclude the state is legitimate, then psychologists who claim otherwise will likely be the delusional ones.
So, I completely agree when you say:
Quoting Pfhorrest
As I mention in another reply "Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA."
The main purpose of the OP is to establish that political reality precedes psychological reality, in the academic sense of some science and mental health service.
State agents can subvert and undermine or even be traitors to state policy, but, as you clearly agree, we can't expect this to be the norm; so, what we expect from state agents will follow from our evaluation of the state as a whole.
You could say the same about academic philosophers.
I did say the same:
Quoting boethius
It was on another thread, so I wouldn't expect you to have read it, but suffice to say we are in agreement here.
My point though is that being a participant in an institution the state tries to coopt does not make you a state agent. The state tries to coopt every institution, but clearly not every participant in every institution a state agent.
In my terminology, you are a state agent in this case, but you can still choose whether to subvert or not the institution's relation to state policy. Whole institutions can try to subvert state policy.
The reason to use this terminology is because we can't easily tell subversive and conformist state agents apart, they may seem the same. The other reason to use this terminology is because it's likewise unclear if a subversive state agent is successful in their subversion or not. A subversive state agent must usually still carry out at least some actions that genuinely contribute to state policy, so they are state agents under any definition while doing such actions; it takes a much larger analysis to conclude whether they are "doing some state agent duties but on the whole effectively undermining state policy".
It is simpler, in my view, to start analysis with who appears to be state agents, why we identify them as such and what processes lead to such appearances, and then go onto to discuss what state agents might be doing with regard to state policy (such as effective, incompetent, subversive, benign agents, and whether they are mostly deciding or following, mostly planning or implementing).
When @unenlightened jokes about "hippies putting on suits" it's an observation about what they seemed to mostly have done in practice, not that it was unavoidable.
From the state agent's point of view (actually wanting to be lucid and be morally autonomous agents and not just conform to state policy), it is necessary to fully acknowledge state agency and one's contribution to maintaining state policy and keep track of that in order to be able to contrast that with other activity and be able to conclude "I am doing more to change the system from within than maintain it".
Spies supported by hostile nation states have little problem doing this, but it turns out "revolutionary hippies" coming off a sabbatical year of recreational drug use and sexual exploration then putting on suits do not leave us with much historical evidence that they were so effective in practice (on the whole) as what they seemed to imagine would happen. I wasn't there, but @unenlightened maybe able to provide us more insight into what may have lead to such lack of historical evidence.
I'm not sure about a department, but did you read the quote I gave Fishfry to their particular rant (about the APA covering up psychologist's involvement in torture)? When the BPS found out about the APA's complicity in the torture of suspects for the US Government they uncompromisingly condemned them in the press and in their guidelines. I don't know if anything's been said about China, but I think the BPS's influence is not quite so strong there so it would have been little more than shouting at the wind if they had. As I said in my previous post, there's only any point in loudly condemning behaviour if your voice carries any weight, otherwise it's just virtue signalling (which I'm guessing is what you might mean by "if the occasion arises").
I'm still not sure I'm seeing the benefit of the 'responsibility' thing here though. Let's take Chinese 're-education' camps for example. They are a disgrace and need to be stopped. Pressure on the Chinese government might make them stop. Which is going to be most effective in doing that - a boycott of Chinese goods until they stop; a voluntary psychology society in another country condemning those who carry it out? Unless you've got some insight I'm missing, it's pretty obviously the former. So where's the advantage in this quest (the OP, not you) to lay the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of some group of people who can do very little about it?
I don't see it as a benefit at all, but as a fact. I have almost no influence on anyone because I haven't ever lived for power or money. But I always vote, for example, because it is irresponsible not to vote, even though it is vanishingly unlikely that my one vote will change the result. The guy I vote for usually loses, but the vote is counted and it counts, because he loses by one less vote and that makes him a bit more electable next time.
Everything is important, everything matters for its own sake and as a part of the whole. To look for benefits is to be a consequentialist and consequentialism fails because consequences are infinite and unknowable. I do a lot of things in a lifetime, and who knows, one post I make here just might change the mind of the next crazy tyrant, or persuade someone to stop beating their wife, or whatever. Or it might in a thousand years become incorporated into a book of aphorisms that guide a million people. So I try to get it right.
I think we are each responsible the way each neurone is responsible for the functioning of the brain. Our relations and our communication create the social world, and that is why it is so important to pay attention to relationships and speak the truth. They are the fabric of our life.
And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here.
Take the UK for example. What is the exact mechanism the UK government uses to ensure psychologists believe in state policy? What is the mechanism they use to decide on the vast majority of research? Then give me some examples where research opposed to state policy has been shut down or suppressed in recent psychology. If you can't even demonstrate having done any research into the topic how do expect anyone to take you seriously?
Quoting boethius
You said...
Quoting boethius
Not 'some...', not 'at times...', no qualification at all, so the point that @Echarmion makes about the limits og government is extremely relevant. In fact the extent of those limits will determine the very question we're seeking to answer here. If the government is very limited in its reach then psychologists will be hardly agents of the state at all, most of their activities will be free of state interference. If the state has a substantial reach the psychologists might be strong agents of the state, spending most of their time carrying out state policy. So resolving the extent of the states reach into a field determines the extent to which that field can be said to carry out state policy. and you how we determine the reach of a particular government into a particular field - evidence, not whatever you reckon might happen after having a bit of a think about it from your executive armchair.
Quoting boethius
The NSA is not an academic discipline, it's an organisation. Edward Snowden did remain a data scientist. Arguably he even remained a spy - disseminating sensitive information to agencies other than your government. He just recognised he was working for the wrong organisation. I'm almost certain there'd be a fairly substantial walk-out if my university decided it was going to help the government torture suspects. What you're trying to claim here though is that the entire field of study is somehow complicit.
Quoting boethius
I don't care what topic you claim the thread is about. I'm disputing the actual written claims you make within it. If I were to make overtly racist comments in a thread about housing I don't get to deflect the indignation by saying "that's not what the thread is about". You have made claims about the specific complicity of all psychologists in the actions of illegitimate states and claimed that even in legitimate ones they act as agents of the state. It is those two claims I'm disputing. You can bleat on about the thread title all you want, if you don't want it derailed elsewhere then I suggest you don't make outrageous claims that you can't support.
Quoting boethius
No, because you've not presented a shred of evidence for your claim that 'philosophy encourages them', not that psychology currently prevents them. all you've done is present a single episode where psychology (in common with every other institution in the country at the time) hampered the acceptance of homosexuality.
Quoting boethius
1. The idea that homosexuality can be cured is not 'the state's' idea, it is the idea of the society the state represents.
2. Psychologists do not act in unison as one legion. Different psychologist have different opinions.
3. You've not provided any arguments at all to show how some psychologicist's delusions somehow make the entire practice of psychology become the maintenance of this central delusion. What is the mechanism which forces the whole of psychology to act in step with the delusions of some? And I'll add now to save time later - I'm not asking what the mechanism is in your little fantasy world, I'm asking what it is in the real world, which means you will be able to provide modern examples of it happening.
So you're saying that the difference between an illegitimate and legitimate state, a "bad place" and "oppressive regimes", is obvious?
I don't want there to be any doubt that you are holding this view, I said I would provide examples if you fully clarified your claim of ignorance:
Quoting boethius
You seem to have moved the goal posts, so please first clarify your position relative the first issue (the "state stopping psychologists practice and research, generally speaking, if it doesn't conform to state policy").
So clarify this first issue where you "wanted examples", and then clarify that you really do need examples of state legitimacy being up for debate.
Furthermore, your whole question simply ignores that people in "oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places" may want good faith analysis about their situation to be created that it may get to them one way or another.
It is only in your "fevered imagination" that I am saying anything else. I have never claimed I am an oracle of state legitimacy, I have made it very clear it is up for debate in each instance, in terms of the criteria and it's realization (that's what assuming a premise means, "assuming this is true, what follows"). Of course, if it is up for debate and a psychologist claims it's not, that such analysis is only relevant in "oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places", then that psychologist is completely delusional.
Not that it's likely I'll support your view you live in a legitimate state (assuming you abandon your delusion it's not up for debate, that we already "know" what countries are oppressive and not), which according to me would be based on majority rule with credible safeguards towards the influence of money and propaganda; but, I want it to be clear to people following this conversation that you don't have the cognitive abilities to interpret what has been said so far, and you are a hack and a fool.
I agree with you in principle here, but in practice there are a limited number of narratives and we each have a limited bandwidth. We cannot talk about and deal with an infinite number of topics. We might all be responsible in some small way for every atrocity on the planet, be that through our shared membership of groups, our suffrage, our purchasing choices... So given this plethora of ways we might be responsible, and the limited bandwidth and discourse space we have to explore those ways, I think it matters a lot that we choose to discuss, and think about, those which can have the most positive impact.
Getting it right I completely agree with, dominating the discourse (as boethius is trying to do here) does more harm than good by taking attention away from areas where acting on our global responsibilities can be way more effective.
No, I'm saying that the only modern example you've provided so far of state control over the direction of psychological research is China (and even then you've failed to provide concrete examples, but I don't doubt your ability to to do so). I'm asking for evidence of state control over the direction of psychological research in states which we do not already all agree are bad.
This is a philosophy forum, it is fairly usual to be concerned with sound argumentation, that conclusions follow from the premises.
Here, I am concerned with what arguments with regard to psychology and psychologists follow from the conclusion one lives in a illegitimate state.
I could carry on in this discussion making no empirical investigation at all, leaving it an exercise to the reader to decide whether illegitimate states even can exist, if they do are any around, and if they are around which one's are which. Since everyone seems to agree, including yourself, that oppressive regimes can exist, do exist, and China is one such example, I have provided some additional argumentation on this agreed premise and another premise:
Quoting boethius
However, on the subject of empirical claims, you make the empirical claim:
Quoting Isaac
Please write a simple list from memory of all the countries and which are oppressive and bad places and which not, since you know this information.
they should put that as a warning for new members, lol.
Well then I'll leave you to it. If you've no interest in what actually is the case but would rather waste time discussing what might be the case when the evidence is right there to be seen by anyone interested, then I've absolutely no interest in continuing.
Raise as many speculative accusations of complicity as you like, I will continue to point out that you have no justification at all for doing so, but don't try to dignify it as a 'discussion'.
Quoting boethius
I said 'oppressive regimes which we all know are bad' and I've already provided my list. China. The only place you've drawn any modern examples from. Hence the point that you can't extrapolate to the whole world state activities which you can only prove occur in known oppressive states.
The key point of contention here is not that in known oppressive states the government controls psychological research, it's your contention that in states whose legitimacy is in question this occurs.
Every European state is one in which the legitimacy of their government is in question (by which I mean they are not ones where we would all already agree are illegitimate). It is my claim that in those states, regardless of the fact that their legitimacy has not been established, there are little to no mechanisms by which the state can control the direction of psychological research and practice. Thus the question of their legitimacy is moot, it doesn't matter, psychological research will carry on in much the same direction regardless as it is not dictated by the state.
In order to disprove this claim you'd have to provide evidence that states whose legitimacy is still in question (ie not China and the like) have mechanisms in place by which they control the direction of psychological research. You've failed to do so.
As to your trivial contention that...
Quoting boethius
...this applies equally to absolutely every person in the world and so is a useless truism. We all have some connection to oppressive states which in some way lends legitimacy to their activities. As I said to unenlightened, the important thing to talk about is which connection can be leveraged to have the most impact. It certainly isn't sharing an academic field of study.
Your list includes only china?
May I remind you of your claim, since not only you don't have the cognitive skills to follow what I'm saying, you don't have the cognitive skills to even follow what you're saying:
Quoting Isaac
Do you even understand your own claim here? That "I am not serving up anything new" because "there is not a shred of evidence this actually happens".
Are you not able to read that you put an "s" at the end of "regimes" and thus implying you know there are more oppressive regimes other than China.
Is your list "China" or is it "China" in addition to other "regimes"?
Since it's obvious to you and something you already know, provide the list from memory according to your criteria of "oppressive and bad".
I didn't claim I "know" which regimes are oppressive and bad and which aren't, you're making this claim. Tell us so that we may know what you know (or then, either way, we can then evaluate this as evidence you don't have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, and you are a hack and a fool).
Yes, that's exactly what I'm claiming. There's no evidence that the state significantly dictates the direction of psychological research in countries other than the ones we'd generally agree are oppressive (like China). You could add North Korea if you're obsessed about the fact that I used a plural.
But, according to yourself:
Quoting Isaac
So according to you, there's evidence this happens in China.
You're refusal to provide the rest of your "list" or then your denial of the basic syntax of your own claims, again, just demonstrates you don't have the cognitive skills to participate in this conversation, that you are a hack and fool.
You're claim in it's formal form is: "there's only evidence where there's obviously evidence! Ha! Show me the evidence!".
When I inquire about "the obvious nature of the evidence" you are unable to follow through and complete your list of "bad place" that you "already know" (the claim we "all know" these things is even more absurd, but let's start with your own part of "we all").
Quoting Isaac
You are saying you "already know" what are "bad places" to which my analysis applies.
Tell us the whole list, not just China. Or then accept you didn't have the cognitive skills to understand your own claim, but now that it's been explained to you, you realize it's a hackish and foolish thing to do.
Yes.
Quoting boethius
I've just supplied the rest of my list, China and North Korea.
Quoting boethius
No, that's not my claim in formal form, it's not any claim in formal form, its a completely different claim in the same colloquial form all the other arguments have been presented in.
Quoting boethius
No, I've done so, China and North Korea. What you haven't explained yet is why you think the completion of my list is so important. It is only relevant to my claim that we agree on countries which are not on any such list. I've suggested using the European countries.
Your claim is that psychological research is largely constrained by states. Your evidence is that this is the case in China. My counter-argument is that China is especially oppressive and doesn't represent the state of affairs in most other countries. I'm waiting for you to demonstrate that this counter-argument is wrong (ie show evidence that it is the case in other countries). Otherwise all you've proven is that psychological research is contrsined to agree with state policy in those states which regularly control citizens in line with state policy.. Since psychologists are citizens, this is nothing but a truism.
So to be perfectly clear, these are the only places on earth where state oppression exists, that you know to be "bad places"?
You've checked, it's obvious.
To summarize: You're defending the claim that not only that you've checked but that furthermore it's obvious, that you don't need to supply your own criteria of "oppression" and "bad place", as that's obvious too, and any debate about anywhere else concerning these political topics can be dismissed prima faci, as the list is clear and settled in your mind: China and North Korea, t'is all.
No.
I have no idea where you're getting all that from. My claim is that I think you, I and anyone else taking part in this discussion would agree that China and North Korea are 'obviously' oppressive regimes. That's it. None of the other crap you've bizarrely ascribed to me.
Please note the bolded terms. I'm referring to us, the current participants in the discussion, not everyone in the world. I'm suggesting we would agree on North Korea and China, not that we would know for sure having exhausted all lines of enquiry.
The claim above, exactly as it is worded, is a sufficient counter-argument to your claim that Chinese state control over psychological research is good evidence that states in general control psychological research.
It is a sufficient counter-argument because it demonstrates that China is not a typical example of the types of state we are talking about as we agree them to be.
To quote you again:
Quoting Isaac
You're key operative claim here is "oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places".
The OP is literally entitled "Mental health under an illegitimate state".
So, either your complaint is "you're just analyzing the OP, what's up with that?".
Or, then you're trying to say something less transparently bad faith, relating "we all know" to "oppressive regimes", that this is somehow obvious to determine, that agents of the state, such as psychologists, we can't assume may try to lead us to believe a illegitimate state they represent is a legitimate state, that political analysis is not first required wherever we are that is independent of state agents -- outside China and North Korea, which I guess you do accept the framework and all the analytical conclusions I've presented, and that their psychologists do try to gaslight their people (being selected for this delusion in the first place, or then generally conforming to it anyways) as to the local oppression levels; that this is key state policy to maintain to stay in one's job as a psychologist in these places (or do you not accept the analysis even for these "bad places"?).
Quoting boethius
"Oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places" is not a claim, it's a qualifier. Not the set {oppressive regimes}, but the subset {oppressive regimes which we all know are bad places}.
Quoting boethius
No, I've written perfectly clearly in my previous post what my complaint is. I'll try one last time.
You claimed that psychogists were agents of the state because they required state permission to carry out their research. Forget the title of the thread, you made a claim within it and I'm disputing that claim.
The only evidence you have provided to substantiate your claim is that such coercion happens in China.
I countered that something happening in China was not applicable to other states because China is very different (we would all agree it is an oppressive, we would not all agree such a thing about, say, France). So my claim is really simple..
Contrary to your claim that
Quoting boethius
My claim is that they are not generally agents of the state because they do not generally need a licence to practice psychological research, they do not have to conform to state policy to do research. The only influence of the state is the trivial requirement to abide by the law, none of which dictates what can and cannot be researched in any way other than basic humanity (we cannot beat people just to see how they react, but really, who the hell would want to do that?).
Global exchange of scientific information (even with China) means that data gathered in the UK will reach scientists in China.
So your entire premise is utterly wrong when it comes to psychology as a science. It is virtually unhindered by government in most countries, it can reach whatever conclusions it feels the evidence supports, and it can freely disseminate that information to nations whose research might be more constrained.
None of this is true of the practice of psychiatry, with which you seem determined to confuse psychology.
A qualifier of who?
Does the Chinese Communist Party qualify as "we all".
If your statement has any content, it is because "we all" relates to obviousness, that the analysis is only applicable to places that are "obviously bad" and that we need not think about other places not on our "obviously bad list". Your use of "regimes" provides this obvious interpretation, that there are "other oppressive regimes" but with regard to them as well we "all know they are bad places".
Now, if you are walking this interpretation back to an idea that "we all" does not relate to obviousness, then your statement is simply "your analysis applies only to those places we all know it applies; and, by we all I mean to refer only to those people who agree with me of where it applies and already agree with me on where it does not apply".
This is meaningless, unless, again, you are using "we all" to refer to people that agree to you because the agreement is obvious; otherwise, who cares who agrees with you or not.
So, investigation, political analysis, is needed to try to distinguish between the places where the analysis applies or not, the "bad places" and the "good places".
You do not have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, you don't even know where you are in the chain of argumentation. I have not even arrived at "how do we know which states are oppressive or not", so by jumping to this topic, you only demonstrate your fear of eventually getting to that topic (because you are a hack and a fool).
Quoting Isaac
More strawmen. You do not have the cognitive skills to understand my arguments.
I mentioned 3 things: 1. Psychologists are selected because they already agree with state policy (there is a large state apparatus one needs to navigate to become a psychologist with lot's of filtering at lot's of steps), 2. Psychologists need permission from the state to carry out research or then to "cure people", 3. Psychologists receive state subsidy (directly or from state proxies) to get the resources to do research (vast majority of the time).
I've already mentioned legitimate sates also maintains policy through these mechanisms, and will also use coercive force to stop psychologists breaking the rules. The difference is, a legitimate state tends to have 'reasonable rules" (because the policy is to have "reasonable rules").
I will not bother to explain why you thought your strawman would work and why it doesn't actually work. I will only mention here that you don't have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.
Quoting Isaac
Psychologists do not need a degree (which is a license from the state) to be a "psychologist", nor "generally" work in institutions that contain a large network of people and state licenses for those people and institution as a whole, nor get permission from various oversight boards (which are specific license to perform specific actions) to conduct human experiments on a case by case basis?
Psychologists do not "generally need" state subsidy directly, or through proxies, to perform their research?
We all know they need lot's of licenses to interact with research subjects and also money from the state to fund those interactions, and I mean "we all" here to mean "obviously it's the case".
You do not have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.
State policy (in both legitimate and illegitimate states) allows for choices. Those allowed choices, formally or functionally, reflect state policy. For state agents, their space of choice conforms further to state policy through the process of being selected for "proper belief in state policy" in the first place and the type of funding that is available (both generally speaking as well as the case by case basis of grant approval in particular cases).
Your discursive, and perhaps thinking method too, is to simply throw up tons and tons of straw, and you think you've accomplished something when your interlocutor cannot exhaustively analysis each piece of straw in every straw man you present. Certainly, you believe that with enough straw, the weight and the pressure of it will be so great as to produce one tiny diamond that you can run off with and covet. But that's not how diamonds are made, no one's ever just piled a bunch of straw to make a diamond, so when you find rocks in your straw piles it's simply more delusion when you think they are diamonds.
No there isn't. Universities are mostly private institutions and the state plays no part in their curriculum nor their decision about who to award doctorates to.
Quoting boethius
No they don't. I have never in my entire career applied to the state for permission to carry out my research, neither has my wife nor any of my colleagues.
Quoting boethius
No they do not, funding comes from all sorts of sources, companies, charities, government or direct from the university.
Quoting boethius
No they don't. You've made up a load of mechanisms and then when asked to prove they exist have just resorted to childish insults.
Quoting boethius
Degrees are awarded by universities which are private institutions.
Quoting boethius
No. No state licenses at all are required to carry out psychology research. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this. You are just absolutely fundamentally wrong here.
Quoting boethius
Oversight boards are made up of a range of people connected to the profession, and from outside the profession. None of them are government officials, none of them negotiate with the government, there are no government policies directing the choices they make other than the exact same laws which bind all of us equally (against murder, physical abuse etc).
Quoting boethius
No psychologists do not generally need state subsidy (or proxies) to carry out their work. Some is funded by the state, some by charities, some by private companies, some by private investors, some by the institutions of psychology themselves. All data is then freely disseminated so any restriction the government funded elements placed on research could easily be undone by other funding sources. The biggest restriction on psychological research comes from the journals, which are private companies.
Quoting boethius
No they don't. I do not need a single license to interact with the people in my study groups. I could design and publish a questionnaire tomorrow, write a paper based on the results and have it published without having to ask a single person for permission. You are just outright wrong about this point.
You have no idea how the state functions, and you do not have the cognitive ability to participate in this discussion as anything other than a troll to put on display the hackish foolery of yourself and your colleagues.
Make a separate thread if you want to argue "private universities" are "independent institutions" that are legitimately independent of state power and do not serve as proxies to that state power for implementing state policy.
Furthermore, where's you "evidence" to establish "mostly". Lot's of people and universities in China, lot's of public funded and publicly owned universities in Europe. Lot's of "private universities" receiving state subsidy in exchange for conforming to state policy. These are in the minority according to you?
By "mostly" do you mean "mostly in the world" or just referring only to your own delusional understanding of things to maintain your precious ego with regard to what you delusionally believe will help your case.
The mere appearance of "independent intellectuals patting each other on the back" does not establish that those intellectuals are independent and not state agents. The mere appearance of "a legitimate state" does not establish that such a state is legitimate.
For, we expect the hackish fool to claim he's not a hackish fool. We expect agents of the state participating in the central delusion that they are not agents of the state and that they offer independent council and research to critique the state, to claim they are not state agents and their council and critique is genuine and not delusional.
To remind you of your own claim again:
Quoting Isaac
When you say "outside your fevered imagination" this is to further emphasize the obvious claim "we all know here" you are making that oppressive regimes are easy to identify. That, even if my analysis is obviously true for oppressive regimes, that we need not engage in analysis of what oppression means and if it can manifest in more subtle ways than China and North Korea. You are saying trust to appearances by literally making the statement that that "one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination)".
You did not say "ok, yes, I agree Chinese psychologists are agents of the state participating in oppression, selected either for their willingness to do so or then delusions about state legitimacy, but, you haven't provided evidence that this occurs in any nominal Western Democracy". To which I could reply, "Ah, someone with the cognitive abilities to understand the analysis so far and that further political analysis is required to evaluate state legitimacy in places where, if it is there, it is not obviously so (well, at least to the privileged classes that live there ... just like Chinese state illegitimacy and oppression is not obvious to the privileged classes that live in China)."
So, unless you demonstrate you have the cognitive abilities to understand your own words and honesty about what "outside your fevered imagination" was meant to mean in relation to "oppressive regimes -which we already know are bad places", then there is no longer any purpose for me to engage in discussion with you, due to your lack of cognitive abilities to participate usefully in the discussion because you are a hack and a fool.
Not that I will abandon this discussion, but my next post will treat you as my case-study research subject to understand how psychologists in illegitimate states maintain their delusion. Fortunately I don't need state license for this particular form of psychological research. For the benefit of people following this conversation, I will demonstrate exactly how various smoke screens are thrown up and immediately abandoned when they don't work, exactly how strawmen are frantically crafted into an army of confusing discourse, how goal posts are moved again and again, how ad hominems are brandied about but dropped as soon as it's realized the "stigma power" the research subject "Isaac" is deluded in believing to have is not effective, how desperate the research subject "Isaac" is to transition the conversation to "peer reviewed" research in a field that has no intellectual legitimacy at all (other than as an afterthought to political analysis) because there is no credible way to disentangle psychology from state power, and, ultimately, how the research subject "Isaac", probably because he was selected from birth by various forms of state apparatus at various gates (the first selection gate simply being the class one is born into or then deluded into wanting to be apart of out of self-hatred for one's origins), participates in the central delusion that he lives in a legitimate state that does not maintain oppressive class relations, that he lends his credibility to other state agents who maintain this delusion for themselves and the populace with more clinical precision, and does research within the bounds and for the purposes of state policy (obviously, nothing politically relevant, and certainly the lack of any politically relevant ideas or intuitions or basic social skills that were not developed as a child, due to a postulated emotionally deprived upbringing, also played a part in the selection of the research subject "Isaac" to serve state purposes at later selection gates, and filtering out other candidates who would be "trouble makers" due to a more lucid understanding of political analysis and better infant phase social skill development, such as object permanence; that the research subject "Isaac" is unable to fix permanently abstract concepts in order to participate in clear adult discussion, but such concepts simply disappear and reaper and how they are related in each appearance is not understood by the research subject but rather the research subject "Isaac" treats such appearances as separate and therefore appears foolish and hackish and lacking in basic cognitive ability to anyone who is able to see where these conceptual objects go when they are not in direct manifestation).
I'm not sure. There was something of a cultural revolution, but there was a great deal of naivety. The suit thing actually happened, and I think it shows that for most people, it wasn't a revolution but a fashion, a temporary lifestyle thing. But some things did survive. The whole-food movement, the ecology movement the anti psychiatry movement, the interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, and indeed the sexual revolution. The Vietnam war was stopped. But when you attack the guns with flowers, you've got to mean business and be prepared for shooting. A lot changed at that time, and some of it was destroyed or subverted by reactionary forces (Thatcherism in the UK), and some just became the way things are.
My claim to fame is that I used to make wholemeal bread for the people who set up Suma, because they were born out of an informal food cooperative connected with the Free School and alternative newspaper that were part of the Leeds alternative scene in the seventies. Perhaps the answer to your question is that where a revolution succeeds, it becomes the norm and so invisible.
Ken Kesey was the American hippie of magic bus fame who wrote One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, which we were all reading along with Laing, and that contributed to considerable reform of psychiatric treatment, including the ending of lobotomies and a vast reduction in electro-shock, which was used as a punishment more than as a treatment. It's hard to even conceive that a standard treatment for mental illness (for difficult cases) at the time was basically to stick a spoon in the patient's head and give his brain a good stir.
But my concern with bringing all that up was to illustrate how a concern with student unrest was prioritised over academic excellence at the the time, and how the curriculum was politically censored and liberal and critical views suppressed. This illustrates how academia can be and is distorted by political considerations. It is obvious since both universities and students are funded out of taxation, the government exercises a deal of influence, whereas students exercise very little. Arguably, modern students have a bit more power since they have become 'customers'. But arguably too, this is an illusion. But apart from the talk that money does on behalf of the government, there is legislation that controls what counts as a university, and what they can and must do to provide an education that counts for a degree. Indeed the whole curriculum is now measured in a ghastly points system derived from the Open University, where each module counts so many points at this or that level, and so many points get you a degree. A national system about as independent of state control as something that is totally controlled by the state. Fortunately, this is all quite OK, because the UK is a totally legitimate state. We hope.
I'm trying and failing to stay away from mentioning the controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes, Colonialist, Empire builder and benefactor to Oxford University. That place of independent scholarship that does not influence the government, any more than the government influences it.
I'm not getting the link here. How does the government's cackhanded attempt to make degrees into quantifiable commodities actually make any difference to the research (which is the point that's trying to be made here). It's not enough to point to some bungled government intervention in the grading system and just insinuate the rest.
In order for this level of intervention to have had anything like the effect boethius is claiming, it would have to select (maybe grade higher) individual modules which support current government policy (there isn't even a mechanism for them to do this, but let's presume there is for a minute). This slight change would have to be sufficient to put off any would-be mavericks from even bothering to apply (why a maverick would care about points is beyond me, but we'll leave that too). Any maverick who dared the terrifying fate of 'not getting quite as many points as they might otherwise' (a true James Dean of their time) would only have to publish a single paper on their anti-establishment research and everyone would know. The government would have to install a whole host of shills to counter it (persuaded to go against the very science they love by...we're presuming 'points' right?). And all this effort to what? Make people think that depression's not the government's fault, so they can carry on their consumerist project. Make people think ADHD is a disease so they can keep kids in schools. Well they don't need psychologists to do either, they have pop stars and parents, who already do a completely adequate job of making people feel like shit if they don't have the latest stuff and insisting that everyone and their dog is to blame for the school not handing little Tommy's violent outbursts.
Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to for something that literally every corporation and mindless consumer in the country is already delivering in spades.
I did more than that. It's a bit silly to pick one point from a broad sweep of a picture and claim it is not enough; it is already supported by a load of other stuff that makes connections of power and influence between academia and the state. So one of the changes that came along with the points system was the ending of free (or very cheap) evening classes put on by universities and technical colleges funded by them, the government and the Worker's Educational Association, in favour of points based courses which were "quality controlled" and free only with a means test. If you cannot notice how this aligns with the institution of the national curriculum for schools and centralises control of the content of education courses t all levels, and thus of what anyone might be qualified and competent, never mind funded, to research, then I really don't know what anyone might say to you that would start to be "enough".
But I'm not an expert in the matter, and am only pointing out the most obvious influences.
But anyway, it looks to me as though mental health is defined in oppositional terms to mental illness, and mental illness seems to constitute a failure to sufficiently conform to the norms of a social situation. ADHD is a failure to conform to the norms of typically a school type situation. homosexuality is a failure to conform to the sexual norms, Drapetomania is a failure to conform to the norms of enslavement, Hysteria is a failure to conform to the norms of femininity, and so on. So as society changes, mental illness changes.
So one can still research homosexuality, but one does not call it a disease. But I wonder, and perhaps this is another argument you are having with @Boethius, what the morality is of sharing the results of such research, with other countries where it is perhaps still considered a mental illness and a crime. One might not want to share the gay recognition software that might be developed, for example.
I really don't, honestly. I'm not trying to be picky here, I really cannot see a mechanism for infusing any meaningful kind of government policy into psychological research. All the mechanisms that you've brought up (and I'm grateful for the fact that you've at least bothered to check yours actually exist) have such broad brush effects I can't see it having any meaningful impact. Not more than, say, television or random cultural shifts.
Removing cheap evening classes was a really shit move, but it lessened the educational opportunities of the less well off. It didn't stop research into glucocortisoid responses to negative stimuli in neonates or something like that. I'm just not getting what government policy could be enacted by these means.
Back in the days you're talking about, with a real sense of revolution in the air, I can see how easy it would be to identify a certain class of anti-establishment intellectual and ensure they were kept out of academia. Now, there's such a spotlight on admissions everyone knows about it if we drop any minority access even by a few points (which is a good thing, mind).
Now schools are another matter. Their curricula are set by government and they are about as designed as you can get to churn out good little consumers, but everyone goes through those. The stiffs, the mavericks and the outcasts. They may do a tremendously good job at churning out traumatised automaton, but they also let the odd maverick through, and virtually nothing stops them at university. As I said before, it's the journals that stop them postgrad, and they have barely any shackles to government (in fact, if you look at the shocking number of journals owned by Robert Maxwell at one point, it's more like the journals telling the government what to do than the other way round).
Quoting unenlightened
Not at all, I've mentioned several times that we've still subject to the law, but this comes back to what @Echarmion said. The range of possible activities not restricted by the law is so wide that talking about the law as the primary determinant of behaviour is silly.
Quoting unenlightened
I broadly agree with this, but
(1) Mental illness is a small fraction of what psychology does. I've repeatedly tried to make the distinction and have repeatedly been told that, no, this is about the whole of psychology.
(2) Societal norms without doubt form a basis from which we judge mental health. I'm not 100% convinced that's even a bad thing, it depends what you then draw from the diagnosis, we have to use some kind of baseline. Or are you suggesting just don't even help the guy who has voices telling him to kill his friends, because hey, who are we to say that's not okay behaviour?
(3) Things are way better than they used to be in terms of diagnosis. Criteria (particularly in Britain) are transparent and trend away from 'illness' towards identify those who might need to be treated differently. Particularly with something like autism (my wife's specialty) the emphasis is on how the institutions around them need to change to accommodate, not how the children need to change to cope.
Quoting unenlightened
An interesting point. I think on the whole I'd plump for sharing, but it's a very difficult moral decision. I'd base it on the fact that, in my limited experience of Chinese students and professors I've not found them particularly 'state tools' they're mostly pissed at the restrictions the government place on them. Whatever mechanisms the state there are using to fill universities with government shills it doesn't seem to be working. All of which means exposing these students and researchers to evidence which contradicts the party-line is, I think, more important than the risk of research being used nefariously...but I'm not sure. Luckily my research is of no use to anyone so I don't have to worry about it.
I'm so ignorant I don't know what the Chinese government's position on homosexuality. But with a totalitarian regime, you do what you're told, pissed or not, if you want to practice at all.
Quoting Isaac
It doesn't have to be precise or absolute to be meaningful. Let us say that gradually, A-level psychology becomes more commonly offered as a course. It is quite likely to start in those places that anyway have smaller classes - not state schools. Psychology departments might come to like the qualification, but not everyone gets the opportunity. So a class bias is introduced into the intake.
That's a simple example of what we know is an endemic problem for the prestigious universities - a class biased intake. And that leads to a political bias towards conservatism, but also affects on average the kind of assumptions about 'normality' that are made and the kind of questions that are asked.
So for an example from mainstream psychology, one finds a deal of interest in intelligence tests (because we like measuring stuff) that coincidentally (???) favour white Western-educated middle and upper-class folks and is championed by Eysenck who uses it to promote what turns out to be a fake scientific racism. And it takes a long time to expose this nonsense, because from the population of psychology departments, it would appear to be true. You have to be smart to do psychology, don't you? Well no, it turns out you have to be middle class.
Absolutely, but we'd have to assume nothing will ever change in these regimes if we assume that all people always do as they're told, so I prefer to take a more positive view that the scientists in China are, at least in part, doing what small things they can to make progress. Otherwise we're just abandoning it. Even maverick protestors need information from time to time, and if we don't share what we know for fear it might be misused, they'll never know anything about the outside world other than the party-line. It's not easy though.
Quoting unenlightened
OK, I can see how that could happen (though I don't think it has happened). The first thing that would result from this is a background bias in Psychology intake. There are checks in place for this sort of thing at most universities. We keep an eye on the class, race and gender balance of courses and the university as a whole. As I said, there's quite a spotlight on these issues now. But let's say for know this class bias got past the checks...
Quoting unenlightened
...does it? Are the middle-class more conservative? I don't think the figures back that up. We're not talking about dedicated psychology courses excluding all but Jacob Rees-Mogg's monstrous offspring, it would (if it managed to have any effect at all) reduce intake to eliminate the poor only - any more than that and the university's going to start losing money as it can't fill its courses. So the bias in research will be to eliminate solutions or topics which might interest the poor. Can you think of any subjects of interest to the poor that the middle class aren't already all over (in their simpering, virtue-signalling, self-castigating efforts)?
Quoting unenlightened
I can see this being a possibility, Like treating ADHD as 'abnormal' behaviour would be more likely among middle- or upper-classes because they'd more likely expect their kids to behave whereas working-class kids might be a bit more raucous normally and so ADHD is less likely to be seen as abnormal. The trouble with that analysis (apart for the problems of cause/correlation errors) is that we are already trying to treat ADHD as a problem of the school, not the child. Why? Not because we had a sudden influx of working-class, but because culture changed. People started to think less in terms of authoritarian control and more in terms of institutional responsibility. That cultural shift got into psychology departments (in fact a good portion of it started there). No government policy involved.
Again, the mere existence of a possible mechanism is not sufficient evidence that it is used. In this case we don't have any evidence that the government is using its power to manipulate the class intake onto psychology courses to shut down or promote any broad research topics. Nor, more importantly, do we have any evidence that it would even be capable of doing so contrary to cultural shifts in attitude.
Quoting unenlightened
But...
..from nearly three decades ago.
So again, how did these radicals decrying the use of the intelligence testing to favour white Western-educated middle and upper-class folks get to such dominant positions in psychology at the same time as Eysenck if his position was delivered and ensured by state apparatus?
Doesn't it sound far more like there was simply a range of opinions in psychology which broadly reflect the range of opinions of society at the time?
Is psychology then a matter of opinion? Nothing much more than a reflection of the society of the time? Then my work here is done.
Ha. No, that's not quite what I meant. I just meant that we're both sensible enough to know that cultural bias influences the sorts of hypotheses that get tested and the way those get interpreted. And that goes for all studies from politics to physics. So the debate here is not whether psychological research is influenced by something other than 'the truth', it's what those factors are, whether they influence psychology more than any other subject, whether they influence academia more than other institutions, and whether they cause more harm in psychology than other disciplines.
It seems to me that the crux of boethius's complaint (and yours to perhaps a lesser extent) is that the state represents the most significant of those factors, that psychology is particularly affected, that academia is particularly affected and that this causes great harms that would otherwise be avoided.
I'm trying to counter that the state is not the most significant factor (it's mechanisms are very weak, broad brush, and indirect). Culture in general is a far greater influence. I'm also trying to argue that psychology is not particularly affected. Medicine, politics, sociology, art and literature are all examples of fields I think more vulnerable to external influences. It's also not true that academia is particularly effected either. Law, corporations an education are all as easily, if not more easily influenced. Finally the harm that bad practices has within psychology shouldn't be ignored, but it's not being ignored. Like most other institutions it's being addressed pretty much in line with the changes that wider culture has adopted.
I just don't think there's much to see here. Psychology has had some fairly shameful moments, as have most institutions, but it's coming along at least averagely at making the sorts of changes that address those problems.
Yes, but you have been over-enthusiastic. We have rather established that fact and science are not the most significant factors either, but rather fashion and local prejudice.
Quoting Isaac
I think this is where I borrow your tactics and ask for some evidence that problems are being addressed. We have already established that as old diagnosis of mental health issues have been found to be unacceptable, new one have come along to replace them, and that at least some of them are also highly questionable. And we have also established that fairly major fields in psychology aside from psychiatry can also turn out not just to be wrong, but to be politically (ie racially in my example) biased and motivated.
We have already seen quite a lot, and no evidence that fundamental changes in methodology, governance, or anything else have addressed these issues. On the contrary, we have a psychiatrist, yourself, defending with almost fanatical fervour the reputation of his profession, and finally reduced to mere blandishment.
I really don't think we've 'established' that at all. What I've been arguing for it that of the non-science, non-fact influences, culture is more important that state. I still think the greatest influence over the psychological body of knowledge has bee the results of the actual experiments.
Quoting unenlightened
Right. Which part of that is not "Psychology has had some fairly shameful moments, as have most institutions, but it's coming along at least averagely at making the sorts of changes that address those problems". Are other institutions, or even just ordinary working class people, making better progress than that? We've identified some unacceptable practices, eliminated them, but there's still some to be dealt with. That sounds pretty much like the state of the entire world. Unless you have a bigger list than I do of these 'highly questionable' new ones. We can discuss examples if you do.
Quoting unenlightened
Again, nothing odd or unique here and none of the situations you described from the past are current, just as huge swathes of other openly racist attitudes in all walks of life are now thankfully less prevalent. If you have any examples of racist models which are currently being used we can discuss them, other wise this is nothing but historicism.
Quoting unenlightened
I've provided quotes, policy guidance, and anecdotal evidence to counter every single on of the supposedly harmful practices you and boethius have mentioned or implied, and yet neither of you have produced a single contemporary example. It's unbelievably disingenuous to suggest I'm the one failing to provide the evidence here.
For the sake of clarity, you tell me the list practices that you think are currently still going on in psychology and I will either re-iterate or produce the evidence if they are no longer supported.
Here's a couple to get you started
On IQ Testing.
Here is the current BPS recommendations if you'd like to check for yourself. In summary, testing must be directed at specified therapeutic goal aimed at -"A person ...judged to be in need of community care or educational services due to a failure to cope with the intellectual demands of their environment and are suffering significant distress or are unable to take care of themselves or their dependents or unable to protect themselves or their dependents against significant harm or exploitation.". IQ testing to prove hogwash pseudoscience about race is contrary to current BPS guidelines.
On ADHD.
On unequal intake.
The UCAS figure here show that there is “no evidence of bias within the [aggregate] admissions system” with regards to race gender or class. There is statistically significant bias in individual institutions (Oxford and Cambridge being two such), but the trend is consistently to reduce this bias in all institutions measured. Bias in universities is significantly lower than bias in government, law, top executive jobs and even literature.
Any more?
Of course, the scandal has been exposed, and the official line has changed, and that is why you cannot deny that there was anything wrong with the previous orthodoxy. And of course the next scandal has not yet been revealed, and so even if I were to tell you about it, you would simply demand the scientific evidence as per. Frankly, at this stage, your continued complacency is becoming frightening. What would it take to convince you that there are fundamental problems?
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/psychosis/symptoms/
Evidence that there are fundamental problems. It's not that hard.
What I don't do is simply assume there are fundamental problems because there used to be. If people say they have dealt with them, if I've no reason to disbelieve them, and if I've no evidence they haven't indeed been dealt with, I tend to believe them. It's called trust. I think you wrote an OP all about how essential it was to functioning society.
Let me ask you this in turn. What is the alternative you propose? If we cannot trust psychologists to carry out their duties what do you propose we do?
Should we stop doing anything for the schizophrenic? Should we abandon the investigation into the changes schools can make to accommodate autistic children. Shall we just not bother finding anything out about how people think at all?
If so, should we do the same to every other institution with a history of reflecting cultural norms? Dismantle the art establishment, stop writing books, disband the judiciary and the bar, raise all universities to the ground, stop all investigation in physics, engineering and medicine? What's the plan?
That's very odd, actually. We have only been through a little of the history, and surely you know it as well as I do, but the whole history is littered with frankly weird supposedly scientific theories that have far more (small p) politics than science to them that have been popularised, then exposed and replaced with new much more scientific theories that in turn are exposed as false and are replaced by this time really really scientific theories that ...
And without there having been any significant change in governance or methodology or philosophy, you conclude that this time, it's all perfectly legitimate. I call that wishful thinking when I'm trying to be polite, and psychotic delusion when I'm being scientific.
Quoting Isaac
I propose that we carry on; but that we do so with more attention to the nature of the discipline, which is only possibly scientific at the margin where it merges with human biology, and that for the rest we adopt a much more humble and far less dogmatic let alone coercive stance in relation to education and psychiatry in particular. I propose that we acknowledge the inevitably cultural nature of psychology and the reflexive way that theories of psychology change the human behaviour they describe.
Quoting Isaac
Obviously not. There is nothing necessarily wrong with reflecting public norms; there is a great deal wrong with representing this reflection as science. This does not apply to any of those establishments and disciplines you mention, with the possible exception of medicine, which is at least aware of the problem and sometimes tries to investigate whether its nostrums and surgeries and care programs actually work.
There has been significant change in all those areas. The governance is made up 100% of different people to the ones who presided over the issues you raised from the past, the methodology is massively revised with much more stringent ethical standards and the underlying philosophy has completely changed from one of maintaining the status quo to one of understanding problems within a social context. It's ludicrous for someone outside of the profession, with no experience or evidence to just come in and say "nothing's changed" and expect us all to just take your word for it.
Quoting unenlightened
Quoting unenlightened
Good principle. What evidence do you have of current practice taking a dogmatic coercive stance in relation to education and psychiatry? Because without evidence of current practice how can we attempt to change? I need to know exactly what practices (or some examples of them) you think are coercive and dogmatic, and some examples of how we could do better. Otherwise it's just hot air.
Quoting unenlightened
Again, a very good principle. What current practices do not already acknowledge this? What things would you like to see stopped and what practices would you like to replace them with?
Quoting unenlightened
So, hang on. Earlier you were decrying the whole institution for it's role in advertising, for fear it might learn to detect homosexuality, for it's complicity in torture methods. Now you're saying it's not a science. Well, at least that lets us off the hook for those things. If it's not a science, then the contributions from psychology in those areas were just pseudo-scientific guesswork. The only people responsible for those things were the advertisers, the (hypothetical actions of the Chinese state and the torturers. We didn't supply them with anything, because what we 'discovered' was just hogwash which doesn't even work.
Quoting Isaac
That is a non-sequitur of truly epic foolishness. A sign of desperation. I'm going to end this conversation here because either I am completely wasting my time, or I am endangering your stability.