PRESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AS AN ESTABLISHED RELIGION
The big difference between the Chinese Communist indoctrinators and today's practitioners of Psychology as Religion, is their method of establishing power. The Chinese Communists were quite open, forceful and crude: if you didn't do what they wanted, then you were punished. Todays practitioners are more subtle and much more effective. They have exerted and grown their power softly. Their principles, actions and publically expressed beliefs come from one one basic principle that gives power:
Dependency of the Many gives Power to the Few
This dependency comes from two complementary components working together: False Freedom and Furtive Force.
False Freedom: This makes us like children who depend on mother or ‘nanny’. Once Prescriptive Psychology has power over people like a religion, it means that we human beings need it as much as we need food, drink, sleep, or any of the other essentials of life. It becomes so much part of our being that we would think it insane to question our need for it. Its prescriptions have created something that we automatically accept as one of the essential needs of our existence.
But if Prescriptive Psychology has taken on all the characteristics of religion (as Freud predicted), then like any religion, it only continues to exist if people believe in it. Psychology as Religion brings this about by people being deceived into believing that they are making their own free choices. This belief in false freedom is then reinforced by encouraging them to regard anyone who tries to prevent them from doing what they want to do, as the real threat to their freedom.
The false freedom belief says to its captives: 'You are the most important person in the world and you can do what you like. Anyone who says anything different is judgemental/paternalistic/intolerant . . etc. (It is no coincidence that Paul Vitz's prophetic book: The Psychology as Religion, has as a subtitle: 'The Cult of Self-
Furtive Force: If we study history, we find that the usual way that human beings have got power over others is by military invasion; capture and enslavement; a ruthless police force; or other methods dependent on physical force. Psychology as Religion is much more clever: it creeps up on us while we are 'asleep' as to what is happening in our society. This usually begins with an appeal to our best human instincts. How can anyone not be moved to sympathy by the crying of a child or the cruel persecution of a minority? Surely kindness and tolerance is something we all agree with? From that point our individual feelings are then gradually manipulated and merged into a social set of norms by those who seek to use our kindness and tolerance for their own ends: such as campaigners, lobby groups and politicians. Once these norms become established, then the political situation is ripe for them to be incorporated into law. Then, what was originally something we could freely choose to think or do, becomes something we cannot refuse for fear of social ostracisation, dismissal from employment, or even criminal prosecution.
