I will be posting sections of my study over the next couple of weeks. Had I done this study more recently it would have been much longer with more data from the many books I have acquired over the past six years. However, I think for the purposes of demonstrating the unbiblical and unscientific nature of the psych field, my short study will suffice. My original paper did not have footnotes, as those were added in later, so if any of my readers needs a reference source, just ask for it and I will look for it in my library. Also, as with my normal practice, I will use blue to identify quotations. Today I will begin with my introduction, and the first part of section on the history of psychology.
Christians are being led into a form of doctrinal compromise so perfectly reasonable that, for the most part, they are unaware of it when it is happening. I am referring to psychology and it‘s related fields. The roots of this system are steeped in humanism, secularism, and even evolutionism, and cannot be syncretized with the Christian faith without compromising the Biblical position. In fact, the fundamental apostasy of the system is so profound and endemic that exposing it does not require an in-depth study of a multitude of materials; rather, all one needs to do is understand the basics to see that the difference between psychology and the Christian faith is irreconcilable. Once this is demonstrated, believers should want to wholly purge themselves of its influence.
The fields of psychology, psychiatry, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, counseling in social work and the various counseling positions in our society (hereafter referred to as “psych” fields) all have their root in Freudian theories. As clinical and research psychiatrist (and director of the National Institute for Mental Health for five years) E. F. Torrey says, “the labels and shape of the box vary, but the base substance in all the boxes is shipped from the same factory in Vienna.” Torrey goes on to say that most counseling is “indirectly Freudian insofar as it assumes that adult problems are a consequence of childhood experiences and that talking about or understanding the childhood experiences will help solve the adult problems.” He also says, “Although relatively few therapists are pure psychoanalysts, the teachings of Freud and his followers pervade almost every training program for all varieties of therapists, and the vast majority of psychotherapists have incorporated at least some psychoanalytic doctrines into their practice.”
When the root is rotten, the branches certainly cannot bear good fruit. Because of this root, the initial focus of this study will be on Sigmund Freud and his theories.
One item to clarify: this study is not about genuine disorders of the brain - organic problems needing medical treatment. While these types of problems are treated by those in the psych fields, they are actual medical problems that can be treated medically. This study is solely about the psych fields and their handling of relationship problems, emotional problems, etc, by various counseling methods.
A point that must be made is that, for all the claims by those in the psych fields, there is no such thing as a “mental disease.” The mind is not something organic that can be diseased. If there is an organic problem with the brain that causes disruption of the normal thinking processes, that is a brain problem and not a mental problem. This idea of a “mental disease” has led to the exoneration of personal responsibility for actions and, to cite Torrey, “can be extended to virtually every criminal act.”
A point that must be made is that, for all the claims by those in the psych fields, there is no such thing as a “mental disease.” The mind is not something organic that can be diseased. If there is an organic problem with the brain that causes disruption of the normal thinking processes, that is a brain problem and not a mental problem. This idea of a “mental disease” has led to the exoneration of personal responsibility for actions and, to cite Torrey, “can be extended to virtually every criminal act.”
HISTORY/ROOTS
To demonstrate the roots of the psych field, I have selected a few well-known representative teachers. My purpose is not to delve into all the teachings of the individuals listed here, rather I am going to demonstrate the background and basic worldviews of the primary founders of the various psychological methods so as to demonstrate what sort of roots by which the tree of psych is being fed. The teachers are as follows: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, Erich Fromm, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Albert Ellis, and Arthur Janov.
Sigmund Freud:
It was Freud who invented psychotherapy. E.M. Thornton, in The Freudian Fallacy, stated, “Probably no single individual has had a more profound effect on twentieth-century thought than Sigmund Freud. His works have influenced psychiatry, anthropology, social work, penology, and education and provided a seemingly limitless source of material for novelists and dramatists. Freud has created a ‘whole new climate of opinion’; for better or worse he has changed the face of society.”
The first important thing to know about Freud is that he was an atheist and therefore had a worldview that was compatible with his belief system. He even said that religion is the “enemy.” He saw religious doctrines as illusions and claimed that religion is “the universal obsessional neurosis of humanity.” Dr. Martin and Deidre Bobgan, of PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries, cite Dr. Thomas Szasz as saying, “One of Freud’s most powerful motives in life was the desire to inflict vengeance on Christianity for its traditional anti-Semitism.” Additionally, Freud had an avid interest in the occult throughout his adult life which led him to consult soothsayers. He was superstitious of the significance of numbers and was involved in studies on telepathy and other occult experiences. He even attempted to combine telepathy with psychoanalysis and believed patients could read their analysts’ minds. His spiritual beliefs surely gave rise to his worldview.
Just what sort of world view did this atheism give Freud?
Dave Hunt, of The Berean Call apologetics ministry, cites Dr. Al Parides, Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA, as saying, “If you look at the personal lives of all Freud’s. . . initial disciples. . .[they] have an unbelievable amount of particular problems in the sexual area. . . . The amount of deviancy as far as their sexual behavior and so forth is enormous.”
So much of Freud’s ideas are wrapped up in sexuality that his name became part of our language (“Freudian slip”). In his theories, sexual relations seemed to be either the solution for everything or the cause of everything. Freud felt the common idea of sexual morality was archaic, and he led the way in the sexual revolution of freeing sex from its puritan moors. Torrey says, “Freud had set the pattern when he argued that those opposed to his ideas were themselves afflicted with repression and sexual inhibition.” Torrey also cites Freud as saying that, “psychoanalysis puts forward absence of sexual satisfaction as the cause of nervous disorders.” These ideas could very well explain Freud’s extra-marital affairs.
According to the Bobgans, “Freud’s theory is a projection of his own sexual aberrations upon all mankind. He chose to share his neurosis with the world as a universal psychological absolute. Carl Jung, one of Freud’s closest early associates, reported that Freud once said to him, ‘My dear Jung, promise me never to abandon the sexual theory, that is the most essential thing of all. You see, we must make a dogma of it, an unshakable bulwark.’ Freud has titillated the minds, tantalized the hearts and foisted a fallacy upon mankind.”
Freud was also a misogynist, calling women “a dark continent.” Although he surrounded himself with women, there is much to indicate that he had problems in his relationships with them. He called girls “the little creature without a penis” and, because of that, relegated them to an inferior status because of their lacking this organ. He considered the desire to have babies nothing more than a woman trying to find a substituting compensation for the lack of a penis. He felt that their main function was to be servants to men.
Freud believed that the unconscious mind, rather than the conscious mind, is what “not only influences, but determines what a person does.” But his main “claim to fame,” as it were, is his theory that everything a person is essentially revolves around sex. This bizarre teaching extended to the infamous “Oedipus complex” which claims that all children between the ages of three and six years old have sexual attractions and desires for the parent of the opposite sex, and want to kill the parent of the same sex. The final result of this whole complex theory is that Freud believed that “every woman is merely a mutilated male who resolves her castration anxiety by wishing for the male sex organ.” Freud therefore “established a system of genital superiority for men and genital inferiority for women.”
Freud was very bigoted, believing that America “is already threatened by the black race.” He was also under the delusion of the theory of elites, “that society was inevitably divided between a small class of leaders and a large class of the led,” as Torrey cites. Torrey also cites a letter by Freud to a friend in which he says, “In the depths of my heart I can’t help being convinced that my dear fellow men, with few exceptions, are worthless,” while writing to another that “I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.”
To further demonstrate Freud’s attitude towards his fellow man, Torrey cites economist Peter F. Drucker (whose parents knew Freud) as saying, “Freud did not accept charity patients, but taught instead that the psychoanalyst must not treat a patient for free, and that the patient will benefit from treatment only if made to pay handsomely.”
The Bobgans give a good summation of Freud’s morality. They say, “Freud’s moral stance was one of permissiveness with respect to individual action and restraint. In particular, he felt that free fornication would be great preventative medicine and psychoprophylactic for the mind. In fact, he believed in a strong, direct relationship between a person’s sex life and mental-emotional disorders. He said, ‘. . . factors arising in sexual life represent the nearest and practically the most momentous causes of every single case of nervous illness.’ However, Freud warned against giving up masturbation for intercourse because of the possibility of contracting syphilis and gonorrhea. But then he suggested, ‘The only alternative would be free sexual intercourse between young males and respectable girls; but this could only be resorted to if there were innocuous preventative methods,’ by which he meant birth control. Thus, Freud’s only objections to free fornication were the possibilities of venereal disease and pregnancy.”
Lastly, Freud taught that people aren’t just influenced by their parents’ upbringing and the environment, rather their courses in life are determined for them.
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