SHRINKAGE

Whatever happened to psychiatry? There are still psychiatrists who dispense pills, but what happened to psychoanalysis and other talking therapies? Is Freud dead? You rarely even seen cartoons in the New Yorker with a neurotic on a psychiatrist's couch anymore. Oh, it was always very expensive and elitist, and easily lampooned, but why is it that traditional psychiatry/psychoanalysis seems to have crawled under a rock?

As a “science,” of course, it left much to be desired but that's because it never really was a science. Psychology grew out of philosophy rather than empirical medicine, though attempts to graft on some sort of scientific patina (e.g., catalogs of mental disorders), were there from the beginning.

In other words, there's a lot to mock about psychoanalysis and talking therapies, and I mocked them, but I never thought they were worthless. Some of the explanations for human behavior that arose from theory made sense to me. They still do.

I suspect the field is largely the victim of political correctness since some of the accepted conclusions of these scientist/philosophers forty years ago are now not merely viewed as “incorrect,” but as offensive, hateful or racist.

I offer two examples.

First, leftist politics today is suspicious of the idea that individuals have a unique psychology based on their early experiences. Identity politics, based on skin color and sex and ethnicity, is the foundation of today's left, which believes (and insists) that women care about certain things because they are women and black people have black issues and gay people have gay issues, and so on. To the left, group identity trumps all. It's why a special font of leftist abuse is reserved for pro-life women or black conservatives or gay people who believe in traditional marriage. The problem with Clarence Thomas is not that his thinking is incorrect; the problem is that, as far as the left is concerned, a black man who thinks that way should not exist. Individual differences (founded in one's early upbringing), are what psychology and psychoanalysis are all about, but the left doesn't really approve of individual differences that conflict with their ethnic/race/gender expectations.

An even sharper example involves the question of homosexuality (especially male homosexuality). Several generations of Freudians had developed a quite sophisticated theory on this, involving the earliest infant and child reactions to sexual cues from their parents, the domineering mother, the weak or ineffective father, etc. And it always made sense to me. Virtually every gay guy I've ever known has had an odd or troubled relationship with an odd or troubled mother, and a father who, if he were even present, was something of a loser.

This line of analysis, however, is now forbidden. There is only one acceptable explanation for why a gay guy is a gay guy---he was born that way. Any other view is viewed as hateful and homophobic and unevolved and nasty.

And that is what happened to psychiatry. After 150 years of study, and a vast literature, it's just not cool anymore. It conflicts with those ideas of human development and behavior that are considered settled by our leftist elites, and from which no dissent is permitted. Therefore, it must be suppressed.

Copyright2014MichaelKubacki