Who Stole Psychology?

I read recently that 93% of all psychologists are left leaning; that explains a lot about my profession. I wish that in the 1980's when I started studying psychology that I had been given the list of rules and regulations outlining the political views I was being signed up for, without my consent. But at that time, I wasn't aware of the "rules"--maybe they were different then, or maybe I just didn't get the memo. If I had, I would have just walked away.

Somehow, in my misguided youth, I was under the impression that in the field of psychology I would study the science of the mind and behavior. Instead, I found myself and other students put on trial for the correctness of our personalities and political beliefs. In my first program in New York, I was in a European style program that had students take a series of exams after their Masters and prior to going into the PHD program. I was in an externship with several of the students who were preparing for these doctoral exams and studied their behavior. They often kissed up to the professors early on and acted as if they held their views in high regard. I realized that my anti-authority attitude was going to get me nowhere and decided another program would be better, and it was, but now I had to contend with political beliefs that I neither believed nor wanted to hear about.

Many of my classes centered around women's rights and multiculturalism. I would find myself seething in class over the liberal views but at the same time, I was unable to speak. I did not see women as victims, but as autonomous beings who were responsible for their own behavior. I felt that affirmative action was unfair and that people should be judged on their merits. I sensed that if I spoke up, the career that I had put so many years into could be cut short; and I was right. A male student in the program made a politically incorrect remark; he was gone a week later. I kept my mouth shut for the most part, until it came time for my dissertation. One of my committee members held up my defense with one trivial change after another. One day, she told me that since I was a woman, I would have to do a dissertion that was better than any man's to prove myself. This, she said, was the way the world worked. (Apparently stabbing your own gender in the back was part of the way the world worked in her eyes.) With my most cold and threatening gaze, I told her that I would do the worst dissertation that any student in my program had ever done who received their degree. She never bothered me again.

After I got my PHD, did a postdoctoral internship and got licensed, I thought that life would change. I got into private practice and thought things would get better--and they did--for awhile. I was so happy to be out from under the thumb of the academic world that hate-filled patients with private fantasies to blow up a gas station and take the town down with them looked like a walk in the park. My patients' anger was direct; they did not beat around the bush and I could relate easily to their frustrations. Instead of doing therapy with violence-prone people, I started doing more evaluations. My first love has always been psychological testing and assessment. I worked for courts, attorneys and government agencies. But as time went by, the left-leaning views that I had so despised in the academic world started rearing their ugly heads again in my work world.

To start with, as psychologists, we are required to take Continuing Education each year. We are allowed to choose which programs to attend but you never know the politics until you end up in a city far from home listening to yet another "objective" speaker talk about battered women, abusive men and the ignorance of juries for not finding a three time murderer insane. One speaker, a forensic psychologist, actually had the audacity to berate an audience member when he pointed out that juries are afraid to find a murderer insane at the time of the crime for fear that the defendant would be hospitalized and released after a short time. Our "impartial" speaker became red-faced and bet the audience that these criminals are rarely released back into society -- to which most of us in the audience, all practicing psychologists in the real world, just laughed.

Don't get me wrong--I often learn a great deal from these seminars -- it's just that I did not go for doctrinization into a left leaning mode of thought. I often see these liberal views touted in the books and magazines I receive from my professional association magazine (American Psychological Association) or from other book presses. Here are some gems I received yesterday in the mail -- ads for the following books: Therapeutic Exercises for Victimized & Neglected Girls and Spouse Abuse: Assessing & Treating Battered Women, Batterers, & Their Children. In my APA Monitor magazine I was treated to an article on Enhancing diversity within APA. Yes, this sounds innocent enough but when you read the article, written by an "able-bodied white heterosexual male" (shame on you--how can you admit to that?) who chastises members of the APA for their lack of sensitivity to minorites, it becomes rather laughable--given their politics. When a stauch Republican or Libertarian becomes the president of the organization, maybe I'll listen to their ideas of diversity. Have you noticed that older white guys are always touting diversity while they sit on as president of this or that association? They have already established themselves and have little to lose with this position and they look really righteous.

In closing on this post, I just want to say that not all psychologists are cut from the same cloth. If the APA believes in diversity--then the 7% of us who are not left leaning liberals should be heard also and not assumed to engage in the same group think of most psychologists. There is room, after all, for those of us who believe that women are not victims, that gun control is unacceptable, that people should get by on merit and not on race or gender, and that the war in Iraq was not a mistake. The public believes that psychologists are "bleeding heart liberals" and this is a poor reputation to have. It may be acceptable within the confines of the APA and in the academic world but it carries no favor to our profession to many people in the public.

AN UPDATE: Some Volokh readers responding to my post on "Who Stole Psychology" don't seem to get my point.The wording used in the articles and books in psychology is obviously left-leaning in their tone--that is what I object to, not the fact that there are or aren't battered women, victimized girls etc. Even the APA (American Psychological Association's) president has an article on how to raise a son who doesn't create a sex scandal. Now, if you think that is not prejudiced, just imagine the reaction to an article on "how to raise a black child who isn't a drug addict." Would people defend that?