This article is a compilation of comments
from the a wide array of psychologists, professors and authors.
There are many who are giving the same warning. Many of these voices
come from within the psychology camp.
"Scripture is God-centered.
Psychology is man-centered. The Bible teaches that our purpose in life
is to glorify God. Therefore, everything else is subjugated to that
purpose. Psychology, being man-centered, has as its highest goal the
happiness of the individual. This is the foundation for the current
emphasis on felt need. If mankind's ultimate purpose is his own
happiness, then all other things in life, including God, become means to
secure that happiness.
Psychology teaches that happiness cannot be obtained if
one is lonely, lacking in self-esteem, unfulfilled, etc. Therefore,
whatever can satisfy these so-called felt needs is a positive thing. But
such pursuit shifts the focus of life from others (Philippians 2:1-4)
and God (1 Corinthians 10:31) to the "all-important" self. This
worldview is completely at odds with the scriptural worldview. Since
this is true, to offer God or salvation as the means whereby our felt
needs are satisfied is a perversion of biblical teaching at best, and
more likely a false gospel."
Gilley, This Little Church Went to Market, pp. 64-65
"In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders published in 1952 there were 60 types and subtypes of mental
illness. Sixteen years later this number had mushroomed to 145, and
presently it includes a whopping [374] separate conditions. George Albee,
past president of the American Psychological Association, says: "Clearly
the more human problems that we can label mental illnesses, the more
people that we can say suffer from them. And, a cynic might add, the
more conditions therapists can treat and collect health-insurance
payments for." Is this cynicism or realism?"
Psychoheresy p. 145
"There is no behavior or person that a modern
psychiatrist cannot plausibly diagnose as abnormal or ill."
Thomas Szasz M.D., Professor of Psychiatry, State University of New York
"Many critics in the field
recognize the pseudo-scientific nature of psychotherapy.
Psychiatrist-lawyer Jonas Robitscher, in his book The Powers of
Psychiatry, says regarding the scientific status of psychiatric advice:
"His advice is followed because he is a psychiatrist, even though the
scientific validity of his advice and recommendations has never been
firmly established....The infuriating quality of psychiatrists
is...their insistence that they are scientific and correct and that
their detractors, therefore, must be wrong."
Psychoheresy pp. 35-36
Psychologist William Kirk Kilpatrick:
" It sometimes seems that there is a direct ratio
between the increasing number of helpers and the increasing number of
those who need help. The more psychologists we have, the more mental
illness we get.... One has to wonder at it all. In plain language,
it is suspicious. We are forced to entertain the possibility that
psychology and related professions are proposing to solve problems that
they helped to create. We find psychologists raising people's
expectation for happiness in this life to an inordinate level, and then
we find them dispensing advice about the mid-life crisis and dying. We
find psychologists making a virtue of self-preoccupation, and then we
find them surprised at the increased supply of narcissists. We find
psychologists advising the courts that there is no such thing as a bad
boy or even a bad adult, and then we find them formulating theories to
explain the rise in crime. We find psychologists severing the bonds of
family life, and then we find them conducting therapy for broken homes."
"A study of trained and
untrained therapists by Hans Strupp at Vanderbilt University compared
the mental-emotional improvement of two groups of male college students.
Two groups of "therapists" were set up to provide two groups of students
with "therapy." The two student groups were equated on the basis of
mental-emotional distress as much as possible. The first group of
therapists consisted of five psychiatrists and psychologists.
The five professional therapists participating in the
study were selected on the basis of their reputation in the professional
and academic community for clinical expertise. Their average length of
experience was 23 years."
The second group of "therapists" consisted of seven
college professors from a variety of fields, but without therapeutic
training. Each untrained "therapist" used his own brand of therapy.
The
students seen by the professors showed as much improvement as those seen
by the highly experienced and specially trained therapists.
According to [psychiatrist] Jerome Frank, over
six-and-a-half million persons see mental health specialists during a
single year. Frank reveals the shocking fact of: "...the inability of
scientific research to demonstrate conclusively that professional
psychotherapists produce results sufficiently better than those of
nonprofessionals."
Psychoheresy pp. 180-81
"A research project at Purdue
University compared two groups of individuals, one with low self-esteem
and the other with high self-esteem, in regard to problem solving. The
results of the study once more explodes the myth that high self-esteem
is a must for mankind. The results of the study were reported by one of
the two researchers assigned to the project. He says, “Self-esteem is
generally considered an across-the-board important attitude, but this
study showed self-esteem to correlate negatively with performance.” He
concludes by stating that in that particular study, “The higher the
self-esteem, the poorer the performance.”
Martin & Deidre Bobgan, Psychoheresy, Eastgate Publishers, 1987 p.60
See more articles -
www.psychoheresy-aware.org
"Psychotherapy,
whether "Christian" or secular... is based upon humanistic theories that
purport to explain and change human behavior, theories that deny the
sufficiency of God's Word, that contradict one another and are
ineffective. As one secular critic observed, "There are as many
techniques, methods and theories around as there are therapists." Former
president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, Lawrence LeShan,
has suggested that psychotherapy will probably be known as the
hoax of the twentieth century, yet the church has embraced it as
a part of "God's truth" missing from God's Word!" The Berean Call
www.thebereancall.org
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