Psychology Has Been Overtaken by a Dangerous and Pervasive Ideology

Since I left the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Masters Program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), I’ve been forced to confront the alarming truth that the entire field of psychology is under the sway of a dangerous ideology distilled from postmodern philosophy and critical theories. This ideology disguises its authoritarian objectives using the camouflage terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).

From my experience, this is an ideology that condones bullying students, pressuring suicidality, and punitively harming even single moms trying to support their kids if they are the wrong color and won’t abide changing their beliefs. The end justifies the means.

This ideology is not interested in seeking objective truth. The graduate-level textbook “Research and Evaluation in Counseling” openly declares that in critical theories, “research is viewed as a political endeavor that should facilitate social action.” The book does not challenge this stance.

This is the same ideology that has led to widespread demands for DEI statements from educational faculty, librarians, and students. This ideology’s reach now extends into the entertainment industry, the arts, many corporations, and, alarmingly, the medical and military sectors.

In a recent article, I discussed this ideological capture and the embarrassing state of research across all the psychology-based disciplines, including psychiatry, counseling, neuroscience, and behavioral economics.

Historically, psychology has been an easy instrument for political abuse. And where current research is in shambles, past insights into manipulation and dominance are frighteningly on point.

With this in mind, let’s get a better bead on all the places psychology science professions have a foothold in influencing or controlling the behavior of the general population through both policy and direct contact by looking at career paths.

There are three major tracks for professions in psychology: Academia, clinical counseling, and broader world settings.

The academic track includes all the expected parties. Professors, accreditors, and researchers. These groups lead the field.

Researchers run experiments and define the depth and breadth of scientific insights. Depending on where they are employed and their level of success, they may also have other duties.

Accreditors set educational standards on everything from what will be taught to diversity requirements in hiring faculty to mandating mission statements that include multiculturalism, global society, and marginalized populations.

Professors, of course, teach. They also act as advisors, design curriculum and tests, organize internships, do peer reviews, write recommendation letters, and otherwise gatekeepers the profession from so-called apostates. Faculty also participate in meetings where they decide on granting other professors tenure and oversee graduate students. Many professors are also responsible for producing research and writing in their field.

Professors can also act as consultants to organizations, businesses, lawyers, and more.

While this may seem a dry list of duties, consider that in each of these tasks, professors can either promote or destroy someone’s career, share valid information, or push an ideology, often in a way that’s embedded in instruction or by establishing norms.

Psychology-based professors also teach business, medicine, law, education, and public policy schools.

The implications of having either an ideologically dominated or incompetent field in this many areas should be obvious. Failing indoctrinated schools, dysfunctional courts, failing businesses, dysfunctional government – the list could go on and on.

A psychology professor situated in a school of public policy would, according to “Career Paths in Psychology,” teach all kinds of global leaders, including:

Three-star army generals, members of royalty, U.S. Navy Seals, mayors, police chiefs, members of parliament, city council members, Private sector chief executives officers, presidents of nongovernmental organizations, intelligence agents, counterterrorism agents, pharmaceutical executives, attorneys, physicians, and more professionals whose work intersects in some way with public purposes.

The clinical counseling track includes psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and counselors. This group is in charge of bringing identity-based ideology into the field. This group also has the power to diagnose, treat, prescribe drugs, evaluate if you are mentally fit to own firearms, and,  in 31 states, put individuals on a psychiatric hold.

In clinical settings, theory enters our private lives, schools, hospitals, clinics, and governmental agencies. Practitioners can, among other things, undermine family relationships, approve or deny services with a diagnosis, or use their knowledge of human behavior to manipulate clients into accepting the unacceptable.

Outside academia and clinical settings, psychology professionals can work in sports, media, corporate management, marketing, publishing, public safety, police departments, non-profits, the government, educational testing institutions, schools, forensic legal positions, independent research institutes, and the military.

The American Psychological Association, the largest professional psychology organization in the world, is shaping the direction of the field by prioritizing activism over the scientific method, following the lead of the counseling profession.

They have promised to improve society by committing: “to applying psychological science to create a more equitable and inclusive world” and elevating and honoring “the voices and perspectives of marginalized social and intersectional identities.”

They want to change the world and believe they know precisely how. Do they have any genuine supporting evidence for such a bold proposition?

And if they did, could it be independently validated?

Would such evidence even be within our same objective reality?

In Career Paths in Psychology, Jennifer S. Lerner, PhD psychologist and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, wrote, “I feel more compelled than ever to ensure that our science is accurate, reliable, novel, and meaningful. Global leaders act on what they learn in our classes.”

I’m sure there are others in the field who feel the same way.

If what Dr. Lerner says is true, I call on her and all others who agree to take a stand with those of us who have already stepped up and save what’s left of credible psychology now.

It doesn’t take a Harvard professor to see where this is going.

Image by Alex_Po — Adobe Stock — Asset ID#: 91116618 & Edited by Jared Gould