The Two Major Problems With Psychology

The following article was sponsored by Animus Empire

I’ve been a graduate student in psychology for the past four years. And every day I become more dumbfounded by how unhelpful if not damaging the field has become.

Every criticism of psychology you’ve heard, or expressed yourself, is correct. It’s unscientific, it’s driven by feminism, it views masculinity as toxic, it perpetuates subjectivism through identity politics, and it would sooner validate our problems than help us solve them. It’s Hillary’s campaign platform in academic form.

If a civil engineer conducted himself like a psychologist, he would write a book about how bridges are impossible to build and then insist anyone who has built a bridge only does so by oppressing minorities.

But each one of these problems with psychology is connected—each is rooted in the field’s two main problems.

1. Psychology is run by women

Aussie women 2

Psychology is a soft science, so it has become overrun by soft people: women. They have turned the field into a barrage of gratitude lists, emotional indulgences, and safe spaces. This is great for women—not so great for men, because now we have come see psychological health as becoming feminized. A rabbit may as well teach a wolf how to hunt.

2. It’s based on post-modern philosophy

Medieval philosophy

Psychology, as it’s studied and practiced today, has been deformed since it was a sapling. It grew out of the philosophy of the 1800s, the century that started by ending the Enlightenment and ended by starting Communism. The field’s fertilizer has been critical theory in which freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and a man can be a woman if he puts on a wig. Psychology is the abused stepchild of a century that couldn’t appreciate its potential.

The Reformation

At Animus, we’ve developed a system of psychology that looks past the 200 years of post-Enlightenment philosophy to the philosophy of the Ancient Greeks. We were able to do this because we’re men and so able to comprehend philosophy.

As Plato unified philosophy by its fundamental components, we’ve unified psychology by its fundamental components. We distill the pseudoscientific mess of today’s psychology to its purified form.

After hundreds of essays, five ebooks, and 120 pages of notes on the history of philosophy, we’re releasing a magazine. You can pre-order your copy of the first issue. Yes, it’s a Kickstarter page, but not a donation page. (You can donate if you want, but we’d rather give you value for value.)

Psychology can be a powerful field, a force to help men with, as Aristotle would say, the form of their issues. And this magazine is the next step in making that happen. As such, it’s more than a magazine—it represents the obliteration of a field that has tried its best to usurp masculinity and turn everything that makes life enjoyable as men against us.

Why this matters

Every problem in our lives is psychological.

No career path? We haven’t developed our identity to the point where we’re the kind of man who can choose a career path.

Not getting laid? We have avoided or unacknowledged anxiety around women, and we don’t know who we are in relation to women.

No friends? We prefer isolation because our neurology hasn’t acclimated to social interaction.

Spend all day browsing the internet and complaining about women? All of the above.

Every problem comes down to psychology.

When we grasp psychology in the same way we grasp any other science, like botany, then we can understand, elucidate, and so overcome our problems. Consequently, cultivating a healthy psychology is as easy as cultivating a garden—it may take time, but principles make progress measurable and guarantee our eventual success.

Pre-order your copy of the first issue of Animus.

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132 thoughts on “The Two Major Problems With Psychology”

    1. Get a life dude, always first on the Kratom posts! Your kids and wife need attention too, you know?!

        1. Does he know where you live? Coz I would check on the wife and kids to make sure he’s not wearing a Unabashed mask pretending to be you! I mean, it;s been 1h!

        1. Ah,the hell with Kratom, the new green coca cola has Stevia extract in it!

    2. Yea, but read through the journal that sponsored this link. “American Women are the Best” “[You Should Fuck] Ugly Girls” ” How to Fart on the First Date”[Evolutionary Psychology is Myth].” This stuff is psychobabble.

  1. Clinical Psychiatry is such a farce. The prevailing theory is that you have a chemical imbalance in your brain, that there is no test for, but that a psychiatrist can discover through talking to you. The cure to this is usually powerful brain numbing drugs taken indefinitely.

    1. Been there, it’s true unfortunately. But psychiatry, at least in Germany, is a different discipline than psychology. Can only speak about the former.

    2. That is psychiatry, you are talking about. Psychiatry, every person is hit or miss in terms of treatment due to different metabolism and chemical imbalance. Sometimes, a psychiatrists has use dangerous medications because its the only medication that can work with a patient and control his symptoms. The problem is with people thinking that drugs are the only thing that can help with there problems. Couple with cognitive behavior therapy is the best outcome or patients. The major issue in psychiatry right now is the lack of trained psychiatrists to manage number of patients properly.

      1. Sorry i always mix those two up. The whole idea of a chemical imbalance is ridiculous. If you have a chemical imbalance in your blood a doctor will run tests. If you have a chemical imbalance in your brain a psychiatrist will talk to you. And where has it been proven that a chemical imbalence even exists? One quarter of women are on anti depressants are we to believe that a quarter of the female population has a chemical imbalance in the brain that’s absurd.
        Also I remember psychiatrists tell me that they do not know how these antidepressants work, but they just do. So you have a phsychiatrist talking to a patient diagnosing the patient with a disease that can’t be proven and may not exist and then prescribing him a drug that he doesn’t know how it works. I’m 1647 and I approve this rant.

        1. I’d be interested in knowing how much science / pharmacology these psychiatrists study.. I mean, do they even know anything other than “drug x makes you happy, drug y makes you sleep”? In other words, a glorified WebMD.com ?

        2. Actually psychotropics are quite complex. Some drugs don’t make you happy, they just make you not sad. But at the same time, it can cause anxiety and has potential to cause you to be apathetic. Drugs are a lot more complex than you would think.

        3. “If you have a chemical imbalance in your blood a doctor will run tests.” It’s not always in your blood though, it’s in your brain. Ever heard of the blood brain barrier?
          “Also I remember psychiatrists tell me that they do not know how these antidepressants work, but they just do.” Depends on the drug. Some drugs do have understood mechanisms, other’s don’t.

        4. Your brain is compose of complex network of cellular connection transmitted by electrochemical signaling. This signaling is done by combination of chemical mediators call neurotransmitters that alter the ability of connection unit call neurons to a transmit electrical signal in the network to area of the brain that is responsible for function in the body. The issue with lot of mental illness that need medication is the increase or decrease of a neurotransmitter is changing the signal in the brain to create maladaptive behavior. For example, person suffering depression have low levels of serotonin, according to animal models. Thus we use medication to increase serotonin levels to avoid a person becoming depression.
          As Andrew commented, your brain is isolated from the body by the blood brain barrier, hence no blood test to tell us what is going on in the brain. Lot of the information about biological origins of mental disease is from animal models and correlation studies on patients affected by a mental illness.
          As medication affects on the brain is based upon animal testing. Actual affects on human brain is different story. The whole ethics on not testing on human being is a good reason. The problem with medication for mental illness is everyone has a different metabolism and chemical receptor in processing medications. Also medication can disrupt or active another chemical pathways or functions in the brain or body. As I allured with depression, the theory is low serotonin levels in the brain is causing a person to become depression. Medication known as Selective Serotinon Re uptake Inhibitors increase serotonin levels, but some research shows that it active a chemical factor that creates new neurons that help a person with depression. Hence why many psychiatrists can’t tell you how it works exactly in person.
          Remember science does not have the exact understanding on how nature works. Everything we learn from observation, experiments, and logic of scientists. Something general public thought was fact 50 years ago, is proven wrong today as seen with the food pyramid fiasco. This is specially true in medicine.

        5. Actual, pharm reps are the people that can educate doctors about new drugs. Sure pharm reps want to you to use their drugs, but doctor can always refuse. Sometimes, a new drug that reps is trying to sell you is the only thing on the market to help your patient, you use it. Plus side for reps is they can give samples to give to patients that do not have insurance coverage for a new drugs.

        6. “Remember science does not have the exact understanding on how nature works. Everything we learn from observation, experiments, and logic of scientists. Something general public thought was fact 50 years ago, is proven wrong today as seen with the food pyramid fiasco. This is specially true in medicine.” This is perfect. So many people seem to think science understands everything about nature, but there are so many things that we just don’t actually know.

        7. It’s an incredibly complex relationship so much so that we do not properly understand it which makes drugging people for things like depression dangerous.

        8. I’m not saying we don’t have a working theory and haven’t done testing. But I don’t think the science is as settled as the psychiatric industry potraites from what I’ve read there are some serious flaws in the studies that have been conducted with ssri’s. It’s also important to note that psychiatrists are bound by the hippocratic oath.

        9. You are actually defending the shitbags that destroyed the healthcare industry? Wow, work for Astra Zeneca? Which company do you work for?
          If you don’t work for one your comment is just sad.

        10. Science is only getting worse, with the advent of scientismists like NDT, Bill Nye, Michio Kaku and other folks with nothing except celebrity status on their minds.

        11. Yes, there are still 0 physical tests for this doubtful physical ailment. We should not be prescribing powerful deleterious drugs without a test, ever hear of the Hippocratic Oath?

        12. Pharm reps tend to be young, attractive women. That’s not a coincidence. You didn’t mention that part.

        13. Psychiatrists told you they don’t know how antidepressants work? You’re either lying or they got their MDs from the Caribbean. Most antidepressants are SSRIs.

        14. The chemical imbalance might be caused by all the different sperm women drink nowadays.

        15. The major problem with drug development. Lot of the lab work and experiments done are isolated from the human body complexity. One the factors for drug development high cost is the clinical trials to screen for the side effects.

        16. Actual it combination of young and middle age men and women in my experience. That why I didn’t mention age and sex in my comment. Most important part about a drug rep is that person being knowledgeable about their products. Attractive women are nice to look at, but as a doctor you want to know all the detail about a drug before you give it to a patient.

        17. Science is never settle. It always going to change. One of the major problems with Big Pharm right now is lot of the trial data for many drugs are fudge to hide some seriously side effects. That a problem that need to be tackle with.
          Hippocratic oath is being replace with AMA oath in lot of med school in the US. I took vows with the Hippocratic Oath when is started school and keeping to that oath.

        18. I work for no one. I speak from experience. I’m not defending the Big Pharm in that comment. Its government regulation and insurance companies’ greed that is doing the most to fucking up health care.

        19. Actually, all women have a chemical imbalance in their brains. However, 75% walk around untreated.

        20. “We should not be prescribing powerful deleterious drugs without a test, ever hear of the Hippocratic Oath?” First thing, Hippocrates didn’t have any tests in his time, yet he still prescribed medicine. Second thing, the hippocratic oath doesn’t say you need to do “proper testing” before giving prescriptions anywhere. Third thing, Outside of depression, it’s pretty easy to determine the correct treatment of most treatable mental disorders. There is a pretty easy way to tell if a drugs is the correct drug- after it’s prescribed, does it improve the issue? I’ll let you guess which answer determines if the drug is the correct drug to use…
          So I have a question for you, sense making a test for mental disorders is impossible, do you suggest we just let mentally ill people go untreated?

        21. Bill Nye isn’t a scientist, he has a degree in mechanical engineering and also does drama (acting). The other two have science degrees and have done science but as far as I know, aren’t active scientists.

        22. Hence the use of the term ‘scientismists’
          Most of these men wouldn’t even be rated in the 50 in their fields (and some wouldn’t rate in the top 100, 1000, etc) but their main talent is that they can sell themselves to a large group of gullible ‘Jon Stewart is where I get my news from’ Millennials.

        23. They do have a great effect when it comes to framing/shifting narratives, indoctrinating students, young people, and future scientists, though.
          They, along with opportunistic politicians, are steering the ship of science to a place where they can loot and pirate it for their own gain.

        24. “that we do not properly understand it which makes drugging people for things like depression dangerous.” Yes we do understand it’s dangerous. If people who don’t need depression medication are getting depression medication, it’s generally because they are have some sort of impulse where they feel that they need medication, and thus It isn’t the fault of the doctors, and the reason I say doctors and not doctors is due to the fact that it generally takes at least 2 referrals to even get a prescription. The amount of people using medications to treat . 10% of the population in the US takes anti depressants. Of that, less than 33% have seen a mental health professional in the last 1 year. Think about that. It’s not that psychiatrists are giving it out like candy, it’s that people get on the medication, and do not get off it. It also means many people on these medications are not bothering with other methods of treatment (counselling, lifestyle changes, etc.). Sure I can agree that we need reform for mental health treatment, and yes this does include less medication, but medications on there own ARE NOT the problem.
          Citation: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/astounding-increase-in-antidepressant-use-by-americans-201110203624

        25. “and future scientists, though.” Not really. Science is 100% based on research and evidence, and if you create a paper and in citation it says “bill bye”, not one person will take you seriously.
          Anyways, nothing they say is really scientifically inaccurate when they are actually talking about science (rather than philosophy such as religion).
          “They, along with opportunistic politicians, are steering the ship of science to a place where they can loot and pirate it for their own gain.” In what way do you mean? Give me examples.

    3. Merely acknowledging the imbalance will be remedied by able bodied submissive women is the key to the health and well-being of men, and the happiness of women as well.

        1. If more women would give blow jobs and swallow, that would fix their chemical imbalance and create a much happier world all round…

    4. True, and also true of clinical psychology. But take a look at social and personality psychology. We emphasize social factors contributing to brain and other issues. We also look at how ones’ personality influences how he or she is treated.

    5. Tell me about it…half my family is on psyche meds for “depression”. My mom has gone from medication to medication over the years, and is now on a cocktail of various meds…she still is emotionally unstable. To her the answer is always one new medication away…totally missing the point that fulfillment comes not from drugs but pursuit of purpose. What pisses me off though is that she made my brother follow the same path….. on meds his whole life now in his early 30’s and is really fucking depressed. I recently moved in with him so I hope I can be a positive influence on him and try to “red Pill” him as it were.
      The zeal with which my mom defends the psychiatry world is frankly stunning.

      1. Psychological treatment HAS TO BE changing the way you think and behave. There’s no other way, and it’s difficult and unpleasent to face and alter things that you’ve done and known for years. So people don’t usually bother. Doping them up is just patching a tire when the tech knows it needs to be replaced.

  2. Psychology is very subjective. They used to be somewhat good at observing things, but very bad when they attempt to give those observations an explanation. This is why they constantly change their minds when real science debunks their stupidity.
    It is indeed feminized, this is why they redefine concepts to dissociate women from them or to justify or disguise the behavior or certain people. For example, psychopathy, sociopathy, emotional intelligence, borderline, depression, paraphilia, transgender, etc.
    This means, she is not a psychopath if psychologists associate masculinity with it
    This means, she is not a sociopath, even if she makes false accusations of rape
    This means, she is not far less intelligent and emotional, but emotionally intelligent
    This means, she is not depressed due to her lifestyle but due to a chemical imbalance
    This means, he is not an abnormal heterosexual, but a normal transgender
    etc.

    1. Have you tried to rub psychology on your husband’s back to increase his drive?

    2. “This means, she is not a psychopath if psychologists associate masculinity with it” Who associates masculinity with psychopathy? What? I don’t know anyone who claims this, at least not real psychologists.
      “This means, she is not a sociopath, even if she makes false accusations of rape” First thing, sociopathy is the same thing as psychopathy. Second thing, neither Sociopathy and Psychopathy are real diagnoses, neither the ICD or DSM have ever had it as a diagnosis.
      “This means, she is not far less intelligent and emotional, but emotionally intelligent” Emotional Intelligence is actually kind of scrutinized within mainstream psychology.
      “This means, she is not depressed due to her lifestyle but due to a chemical imbalance” Some people really do have chemical imbalances, but psychology has really been trying to move away from that and move away from using drugs to treat depression.
      “This means, he is not an abnormal heterosexual, but a normal transgender” The general protocol for dealing with transgenderism is that it’s a type of body dysphoria actually to try to do everything to get them to control there dysphoria and surgery is a very very last resort thing (which is my so few people actually get sexual reassignment surgery).

      1. “I don’t know anyone who claims this, at least not real psychologists”
        • So you expect them to affirm in public they are biased, incompetent?
        • “Real”, in other words, what you think “real” means
        from the book “Snakes in Suits”:

        The issue is clouded by sex-role biases in the diagnosis of the disorder. Thus, when a female and a male each exhibit a psychopathic pattern of core personality traits—grandiose, egocentric, selfish, irresponsible, manipulative, deceitful, emotionally shallow, callous, and lacking in empathy, remorse, and guilt—a clinician will often diagnose the male as a psychopath (or antisocial person – ality disorder) and the female as something else, usually histrionic or narcissistic personality disorder. In each case, the clinician’s diagnosis is influenced by expectations of how psychopaths should behave. That is, the clinician expects psychopaths to be tough, dominant, and aggressive, and a woman who does not project these characteristics therefore is not a psychopath.


        “sociopathy is the same thing as psychopathy”
        • read: sociopath . noun, Psychiatry.
        a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.
        • They change terms all the time, now they call it antisocial for a reason
        your quote: “real psychologists”, “real diagnoses”
        • This is a critique to THEM, and you are trying to use their own definitions to validate them. That is NOT intelligent, but biased.
        • Emotional Intelligence is one of the biggest stupidities out there, even an obvious oxymoron. When you are emotional you are not very rational, that is well known. read this:
        Why Emotional Intelligence Is an Invalid Concept by Edwin A. Locke, University of Maryland
        […]
        It is simply arbitrary to attach the word intelligence to assorted habits or skills, as Howard Gardner and EI advocates do, on the alleged grounds that there are multiple types of intelligences. This extension of the term simply destroys the meaning of the concept—which, in fact, is the hidden agenda of the advocates of multiple intelligences. The ultimate motive is egalitarianism: redefining what it means to be intelligent so that everyone will, in some from, be equal in intelligence to everyone else. The agenda here is not scientific but political.[…]
        “Some people really do have chemical imbalances”
        • Some people indeed, some… a extreme minority. The rest have a chemical imbalance because of their depression, not the reverse
        “body dysphoria”
        • Again, you are using their unprofessional terms to defend them, after all the sickness they have caused with those words, like gender, etc.
        But, are you a psychologist ?

        1. “So you expect them to affirm in public they are biased, incompetent? ” No. But when one random psychologist says something, and every other person in psychology says they are full of shit, would you say there idea is accepted? Btw, I misused the word real. I should have said “no mainstream”, as in that idea of psychopathy being masculine is not accepted by the mainstream of psychology.
          “a clinician will often diagnose the male as a psychopath” First off, I know this is bullshit because psychopathy isn’t a diagnosis, it’s an armchair (psuedo) psychologist term.
          “or antisocial person – ality disorder) and the female as something else, usually histrionic or narcissistic personality disorder” Well those are two distinct things. Someone with Antisocial personality disorder violates the rights of others – they are violent. Narcissistic Personality disorder is for people who are self obsessed.
          “That is, the clinician expects psychopaths to be tough, dominant, and aggressive, and a woman who does not project these characteristics therefore is not a psychopath.” Ummm no. Psychopathy is not really a diagnose or classifiable mental disorder, it’s more like a state of mind. (most) People with Psychopathy can (will) go their whole lives being perfectly functional people and not cause any problems. They will not ever know they are even a psychopath. This is the reason why psychopathy doesn’t have a official status or diagnosis, it’s not necessarily a problem.
          “a person with a psychopathic personality whose behavior is antisocial, often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.” This is more of an armchair definition than anything official. Sociopath and Psychopath is pretty much interchangeably, though some people place Sociopath as a violent Psychopath. We can go with that if you want.
          “Emotional Intelligence is one of the biggest stupidities out there, even an obvious oxymoron. When you are emotional you are not very rational, that is well known. read this:
          Why Emotional Intelligence Is an Invalid Concept by Edwin A. Locke, University of Maryland” I agree with you, and so does mainstream psychology. You don’t need to argue this with me or them.
          “The ultimate motive is egalitarianism: redefining what it means to be intelligent so that everyone will, in some from, be equal in intelligence to everyone else.” Well to an extent that is somewhat true. Everyone at every stage of society is needed. We need trench diggers and garbage collectors and dish washers. One person good at one thing doesn’t make you good at everything. Back to intelligence though, IQ, and any other measure of intelligence is blown up to be more than it actually is. IQ is just a measure of your ability to learn from stimuli, and even those with low IQ’s (such as 90) can still learn, albeit slower.
          “Again, you are using their unprofessional terms to defend them, after all the sickness they have caused with those words, like gender, etc.” No I am not. That is an actual Diagnosis in both the ICD and DSM.
          “But, are you a psychologist ?” No. But I would say I too an extent understand more than the average person, and it seems as though a lot of people seem to confuse actual psychology with philosophy.

        2. You have to respond with valid arguments, not personal ideas.
          You made certain affirmations, now you see the opinion of experts contradicting you.
          Sociopath = an antisocial psychopath.
          Psychologist terms = invented terms. “Official”
          The book quoted is correct. The dictionary quoted is correct, the critic on emotional intelligence is correct. Your personal opinions, are incorrect.
          You will have to give a proper answer now, not personal thoughts.

        3. “You have to respond with valid arguments, not personal ideas.” I assume you are talking about the thing about intelligence. I pointed out that was a side thought, not my actual response. Let me and then I go on to the actual response: “Back to intelligence though, IQ, and any other measure of intelligence is blown up to be more than it actually is. IQ is just a measure of your ability to learn from stimuli, and even those with low IQ’s (such as 90) can still learn, albeit slower.” I would like to also add that there is no consensus on what intelligence even is. IQ is simply a measure of cognition.
          “The dictionary quoted is correct” Dictionaries are not official medical literature. Neither the ICD, or the DSM recognize it. YOU are using personal ideas, not me. I am using the actual definitions according both the international and national (american) diagnostic manuals for mental health…
          “the critic on emotional intelligence is correct” Why do you seem to think I support the idea of emotional intelligence?

  3. The one issue you don’t raise is the damaging influence of, ‘Publish or Perish’ this is how outlandish theories are promulgated. Initially simply because some professor or graduate needs to have papers published to build their resume/reputation to get hired or promoted. Unfortunately, that leads to papers based on supposition and speculation with little to no evidence, only conjecture based on feeling (or a cynical – this supports the hivemind so they’ll publish it). Of course, journals want to publish edgy and new ideas/theories which pushes the professors to get more outlandish. (I give you- micro-aggression and a host of other things…) They then get repeated built upon, and the rubes who don’t realize its just driven by publish or perish start repeating and acting on it as if its gospel.

    1. Lip Gallagher’s (from the show Shameless) advice on book reports comes to mind: Always argue that the main character was written to be a latent homosexual. If your English teacher is gay, they’ll give you an A. If they’re not, they’ll give you an A anyway in fear of being called homophobic.

  4. Psychologists today have perfected the art of mind-fucking. One guy I know was upset because this girl he really liked seemed interested, then ghosted him. He mentioned it to his male therapist, who then told him, I shit you not, “her feelings for you are too strong for her to face.” Now anytime a girl ghosts him he convinces himself that she was just too into him. Mind officially fucked.

    1. there was a telling post by a shrink a few months ago, something along the lines of 95% women, when finalizing realizing what their problem was, still refuse to change. The man gave up decades ago, he only “counsels” them for their money. Brutal

        1. I know right? “I’m sick so it’s not my fault. Then I don’t have to feel guilty if I do this or that.”

      1. My God Mother was a psychologist, she said the same thing. And the difficulty in treating married couples was the wives refusing to work on things, and then increasing/changing their manipulations and destructive behavior to sabotage therapy. In many cases where the men took things seriously, got into individual counseling and changed their issues, the marriages broke up because a) they men stood on their own two feet and left, or b) the wives couldn’t keep them down anymore, took lovers, and left.

    2. I took only one psychology class in college (1st semester of freshman year), the guy was a commie who was more concerned with calling capitalism a mental disorder… and for saying that guys were a broken and pathetic species because the ideal and complete human is apparently a chick.
      I do have to thank him though, his class and the fact that he ran it like a DPRK propaganda center made me dismiss psychology as BS (except for dark triad stuff) and also promise to dedicate my life to vanquishing SJWs.

  5. There was this one psychologist who practically debunked psychoanalysis by trolling mental institutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

    Rosenhan’s study was done in two parts. The first part involved the use of healthy associates or “pseudopatients” (three women and five men, including Rosenhan himself) who briefly feigned auditory hallucinations in an attempt to gain admission to 12 different psychiatric hospitals in five different states in various locations in the United States. All were admitted and diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. After admission, the pseudopatients acted normally and told staff that they felt fine and had no longer experienced any additional hallucinations. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs as a condition of their release. The average time that the patients spent in the hospital was 19 days. All but one were diagnosed with schizophrenia “in remission” before their release.

    This is where it gets funny:

    The second part of his study involved an offended hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 193 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 19 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. In fact, Rosenhan had sent no one to the hospital.

    1. And this is why if the government determines that crazy people can’t have guns, they’ll be able to take guns away from any individuals they want.

    2. One of my all-time favourite research studies. There has never been an adequate response to this. Psychiatry has probably improved a bit since the days of ‘throw the key away’ institutionalisation, but throwing medication and stereotyped diagnoses at people is still pretty much the only thing hospital psychiatrists have.

    3. Totally believe it. There’s a “stress center” where I live. Perfectly sane people have been locked up there by angery wives and the “doctors” wouldn’t let them go until they played the system, which meant saying they had problems the doctors kept saying they had, and then pretending to get better over the course of weeks. And then you have the guys trying to get out of legal trouble by having themselves locked up to avoid court dates. Yeah, they have some crazy people in there, but they’re not getting any help for their real problems.

  6. There are three problems with Psychology. • The first one, is all the pseudo-psychological stuff that has invaded and permeated the minds of lay people and psych professionals alike. pseudo-science is always dangerous, unfortunately what most people know about psychology is pure bull, (some even confuse it with Psychiatry) stuff like “inner child”, “transactional analysis”, “NLP”, “Myers-Briggs test”, “Enneagram”, and lots and lots of others • The second problem, is the use of archaic theories that have been found useless like those of Freud, Jung, psychoanalysis, and parts of humanistic psych. • And third, is the overemphasis in “feeling good” like the “self-esteem” movement, empowerment, the rise of helicopter parents and so on.
    When forgetting that we shouldn’t move to either extreme of the pole and should try to maintain a sense of balance and remain scientific, the field has been poisoned by Marxist sociology, feminist theory, critical theory, you know the Frankfurt school, and so on. That’s how we end up with people who try to placate masculinity, or cheering stupidity like “gender is a social construct” and so on.
    So, yeah, Psychology is really useful when used correctly but the field is plagued by idiots, I constantly face palm when hearing what my colleagues do. I my self have been fortunate enough to being able to help many people with issues.

    1. “is the use of archaic theories that have been found useless like those of Freud, Jung, psychoanalysis, and parts of humanistic psych” It’s not that they are useless, it’s that much of what they developed is now considered simply wrong. Psychoanalysis is still useful if the issue is caused by experiences (rather than genetic or physical problems).
      “And third, is the overemphasis in “feeling good” like the “self-esteem” movement, empowerment, the rise of helicopter parents and so on.” this isn’t really psychology, this is just parenting.

      1. Yeah, parents, schools, and corporate environments tend to fall for the hype and are constant victims of Pseudo-Psychology, (learning styles, anyone?) and only see a narrow picture of what Psychology is.
        Psychoanalysis can help some people but it is not really useful, and there are very few people who practice it, its little child Psychodynamics has found more success in modern times, although parts of it are still based on the same wrong theories.
        Psychoanalysis is more practiced in the arts, you know, painting, movies, in literature, talking about archetypes, and stuff. But in Psychology it is very rarely used.

        1. “schools, and corporate environments tend to fall for the hype and are constant victims of Pseudo-Psychology” Oh yeah. I don’t know how many times I have taken personality or brain tests or hemisphere tests (the most pseudo-scientific of the 3), all of which have different criteria and completely different criteria, yet people act like they are “scientific”.
          “But in Psychology it is very rarely used.” The only thing I think it would be useful in is people who experienced abuse as children, but other than that, it’s pretty much fallen out of use.

  7. Psychology has more fundamental issues than is presented here. The basic problem is that it has yet to be linked to any underlying neurobiology and, hence, etiology. None of the classifications of mental illness have any links to a recognized etiology (cause) which, be definition, would be based on neurobiology. This leads to the common situation where you can take a psych patient to a hospital and have that person diagnosed with one condition, then bring the same patient back to the same hospital 6 months later, only to receive a completely different diagnosis. Psychology is still in its alchemy stage of development. It has yet to grow into a legitimate scientific discipline.

    1. “None of the classifications of mental illness have any links to a recognized etiology (cause) which, be definition, would be based on neurobiology.” The problem is, it’s kind of hard to link these things. We cannot just cut someone open and see what there brain looks like, and not all mental issues are caused by physically detectable things (such as physical Trauma or chemical imbalances). The best thing that can be done is to take psychotropic substances, give it to someone with a set of symptoms, and see how it works, and then try other similar substances if it does improve their condition.

      1. Essentially the patients are glorified guinea pigs whose odds of actually curing or at least alleviating their condition are the same either going to a psychiatrist/psychologist or to a witchdoctor. I get it.

        1. “Essentially the patients are glorified guinea pigs” Well no. I mean part of the problem is that different medications end up with completely different results in different people. For example, people with ADHD don’t a “rush” from stimulants like most people do. Psychotropic drugs are very complex, and none of them interact with one thing and that thing alone. So it does take a little bit of experimenting on people in order to get optimal results, but that is just what has to be done. At this point though, there is a pretty big arsenal of drugs to use, so they don’t need to create new ones that much.
          “whose odds of actually curing” The vast majority of metal disorders don’t have any cures. All you can do is treat them.
          “their condition are the same either going to a psychiatrist/psychologist or to a witchdoctor.” Ummmm… No. For starters, psychologists don’t even give out drugs, they do testing, therapy, and recommendations to psychiatrists, who can actually prescribe out medications. Second thing, one of the biggest problems with psychology is that patients don’t follow though with stuff they should be doing. A lot of them refuse to change lifestyles.

  8. Genuine psychology is still found in the roots of psychoanalysis. Honoring men as being in tune with their animal nature, and women as beings of sexual pleasure and biological reproduction, psychological forces are meant to be in balance, male and female. There will be a return to the savage roots of this understanding.

    1. Uh, no. Psychoanalysis comes from the degenerate Culture of Critique by white civilization’s biggest enemy.

  9. I know the field of sexology has become politicized to promote feminism and normalize deviancy. Just look at the college textbooks about human sexuality and all the space they devote to the female orgasm, gays, transgenders, fetishes and so forth.
    By contrast, none of the ones I’ve seen deals with the trend where a handful of men forms harems while the rest of the men face sexual eviction. If sexologists took this phenomenon seriously, that would draw attention to the ongoing social disaster caused by women’s sexual freedom.

    1. “female orgasm” Well devote space to that because well, it’s not really understood how or why it even happens.
      “gays, transgenders, fetishes and so forth.” Well, there is only so much stuff about heterosexuality people you can study, why would you research things you do understand (heterosexuality) rather than things that are not understood?

      1. “”female orgasm” Well devote space to that because well, it’s not really understood how or why it even happens.”
        ———————–
        I say who gives a rat’s shit?
        WE’RE the ones that, ultimately, pay for sex whether or not they orgasm!

        1. “I say who gives a rat’s shit?” Does it matter? Really it’s just whoever decided they wanted to do a study on it…
          “WE’RE the ones that, ultimately, pay for sex whether or not they orgasm!” Yeah, but unlike you, most people don’t just use prostitutes for sex and don’t plan on their partner having an affair.

  10. Psychologists suck because their job is not to make you a better person, their job is to keep you coming back. I’ve had a few close friends/girlfriends go to shrinks, and I have to admit, at first I was hopeful–maybe she’ll finally see just how histrionic she is, I thought. Nope. The shrink just fed them what they wanted to hear, and added to their already overly self absorbed concept of the world. Then it struck me, duh: he, or she, is simply telling them what it takes to keep them as a client.

    1. Not much different than physio-therapy, where they’ll keep you coming back for years on end for things like exercises after knee surgery, even if you are already running marathons for shits & giggles on the weekends. Always, when YOU say, “This is enough,” you will get a spiel about how your knees are going to blow apart in ten years and you’ll become a cripple.

      1. Similar to how dentists scare parents by telling them their child’s teeth will start growing out of their nose if they don’t get braces.
        That crap’s been going on for decades.

    2. I had a girlfriend of several years who was a Psychologist, not a Psychiatrist. She was one of the most screwed up people I’ve ever known.

      1. I used to work in a psych hospital 20 years ago and I can attest to that. I dated a psychologist, and she was a possessive control freak. I also dated a couple psych nurses, too. Batshit crazy. All of them.

    3. This is so big. I have a friend who went to marriage counseling. I could tell within five seconds why he was having marriage problems, his wife was a pathological narcissist. The marriage counselor never even scratched the surface. I asked my friend about the questions the counselor asked and I was stunned, just brain dead retardation. It reminded me of my sociology professors in college; these people never worked a real job in their lives, many are just spergs who go from high school, to college to graduate school. No actual life experience or understanding of people. Marriage counselors just want to keep people coming back, and many times the couples (the woman) just want to be able to say they went to counseling and really tried to save their marriage. For some people it’s how they ease themselves into the idea of divorce.

  11. Psychology and Pharmacology have teamed up in the last few decades to make and absolute mess in western society.
    The former tells you have ADD, OCD or one of 1000’s of “mental conditions” whatever and the later comes right in with “hard narcotics” in pill form that will solve all of your problems.
    Besides the proverbial “Red Pill’ , unless you hear voices or see things that aren’t there, you should be very cautious around these two “sciences.”

    1. Nowadays every boy that displays the slightest bit of eccentricity (i.e. not a motormouth, bimbo, cunt) is immediately dubbed autistic or aspergers.
      IMHO all the talk about the scourge of autism is really an attempt by feminists to marginalize wiz kid, nerd types that are great at stuff the fems know darn well, deep down inside, that women suck at.

  12. It’s funny to see people here having a very narrow view of Psychology. Fellas, there are different and a very wide range of paths within psychology that you can choose to make your career. There isn’t only the shrink that tells you what you want to hear, there are psychologists who helps people in times of disasters, who helps athletes reach their max potential, psychologists who study poor communities, who study society as a whole and the list goes on.

  13. I’m getting tired of advertisements disguised as articles on the ROK site. This is two in the past few days (the infomercial on sports drinks was the first I noticed). This is dishonest to readers of the site and demonstrates a lack of integrity. Either identify these “articles” as advertising and put them on a separate part of the home page where people can access them voluntarily, or eliminate them altogether.

    1. It does tell you it’s a sponsored post. That’s the indication it’s an ad.

  14. 4 sentences apparently justify that psychology is bad. Because it’s run by women. So buy our magazine. Are we trying here?

  15. I hope this site doesn’t go the way of right wing talk radio.
    Where 2/3 of the talk time is devoted to the ‘conservative’ value of Lifelock Security.

  16. you’d think women would be great psychologists with the amount of time they spend obsessing over what everyone else is thinking(about them).
    Its too bad every genuine interest they have turns out to be a total waste of energy,mind and time, I really feel sorry for them on this

    1. Right. The psychology of fashion, gossip, and reality tv shows. Or the shit nobody with a brain cares about.

  17. Damn I’m never quick enough to get in there with the kratom jokes first. A very topical article for me as I work in the field myself, and have been practicing a more masculine approach to my work.

      1. Kratom will unify all the disparate elements in psychology. This will usher in a golden age of humanity the likes of which the world has never seen. Only then will humanity be saved. It takes a kratom to raise a child.

        1. I would say it takes two doses of kratom to produce a happy balanced child

  18. “The field’s fertilizer has been critical theory in which freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, and a man can be a woman if he puts on a wig. ”
    A worthy and necessary project IMO. As a psych graduate I’ve long considered there to be an urgent need to counter the feminisation of psychology, particularly but not exclusively with regard to its take over by feminism and ‘progressive’ critical theory, so I’m glad to see the problem correctly identified in the article.
    I actually did a psychology course a few years after a family member had done the same course at the same institution, and was in possession of the course material that she had been given previously. Even though it was supposed to be the exact same course the material had changed unrecognisably on account of a change of personnel in the course team. From looking at both sets of course material it was clear that the course had gone from featuring genuine psychology, with proper regard for empiricism, objectivity, and scientific method etc., to something that was little more than vehicle for pushing the course designers own feminist, (and often literally marxist) values and ideologies. The abandonment of objectivity not just as a principle upon which the discipline should be founded but also as something to be fostered in students was absolute. I actually had a lot of interest in the materials and the approach (some of which I continue to consider to have a degree of validity … for instance I’m very interested in the discursive side of psychology) however the course was ultimately nothing more than an attempt to indoctrinate students into thinking and feeling the same way as the course designers thought and felt. Even when it came to project work there were overt suggestions on what students might want to focus on: ‘for example one suggestion was to do a project on “alternative families’ – this was literally given as the main suggestion in the course handbook for one particular project.
    The problem with psychology and social sciences generally (and increasingly every other subject) is that under the auspices of these corrupt activist academics the pursuit of knowledge is no longer about discovering the world, or in the case of psychology discovering things about human mind and behaviour, but about ‘changing’ the world – the old social justice marxist praxis that requires the change agent to turn knowledge into a weapon against the status quo in order to create something else, more in keeping with ‘anti-oppression’ or whatever.
    The feminisation of psychology as a subject goes hand in hand with this corruption. Women can often make good psychologists, and have often contributed a great deal to both psychoanalysis and psychology (I have a lot of regard for psychoanalytics figures like Melanie Klein and even Karen Horney (who was actually pretty feminist) but as the article suggests their expropriation of the subject as a whole has turned into a ghetto of subjectivism and narrow self interest.
    Later on I did another post-grad course, where nearly all the suggested reading material / and research options related to the myriad facets of motherhood. No doubt many young women (the vast majority of students today) will be able to relate intimately to such topics) but this overt privileging of feminist / female affairs and attendant de-legitimisation of male (oppressive / patriarchal) concerns (except where they challenge traditional masculinity) has turned psychology into a subject which is poisonous and deeply unwelcoming to (young) men. The great irony is that all these social science courses are supposed to be bending over backwards to ensure fairness and social inclusion, but this never goes much beyond the drably predictable and pointless campaigns to get more women into STEM or whatever. In actual fact psychology / social sciences now overtly discriminates against men, and the fact that its hierarchy is blind to the fact is a measure of how women, and fem-think completely face-sits upon the discipline a whole. Unless something is done this ghetto’isation of the discipline will be its undoing. It’s always been a poor relation of the other sciences, and if something isn’t done, and the rot isn’t removed, it will simply lose all credibility as subject. .

  19. Psychology is such a vast field. I really don’t see the feminine element in most of the thousands of priming studies that are conducted in cognitive psychology labs every year, or the neuroimaging studies at institutes specialized in neuropsychology. There is a strong trend in many psychology departments to not promote, even repress, soft science.
    Being an anthropology-based cognitive scientist who has worked with many psychologists, I understand that the field of psychology has some major flaws, but this article doesn’t address any of the more fundamental issues. In fact, its reasoning is on a par with how most gender studies folk would argue, just in the opposite direction.

    1. it will depend on area, as well of course on department, university etc. Priming studies are also going to be mostly quantitative in terms of methodology, mixed methods aside. While psychologists need to know both quantitative and qualitative methods they’re likely to be more adept at and to focus more on one or the other. This is perfectly legitimate as there may be more than one way to investigate a subject area, and some research questions will be suitable for one type of approach but not another. If it was just a question of that, I don’t think there would be much of a problem because then it would be just a question of finding the correct way of approaching an issue, but there’s something deeper and more ideological going on as well, even if that may not be the case in your particular department or line of work.
      The increase in the number of women in psychology has unsurprisingly also seen a rise in feminist influenced psychology and the type of ‘critical’ / (& postmodern) approaches the article eludes to. One aspect of this has involved a broadside against traditional exclusively quantitative methodology sometimes quite crudely as ‘male science’, with the idea that it is allied with, and an instrument of the oppression of women / minorities etc. Most psychologists who use qualitative methods would ordinarily consider quantitative approaches as complementary, but with critical psychology what you have is a direct attack on the idea of (quantitative) ‘measurement’ as something that does violence to the object of concern, the idea that as with Procrustes bed, that object of concern will be made to fit the method even if the psychologist is mindful of questions of validity etc..
      I have some sympathy for that type of critique (i.e. that the knowledge produced will always to some extent be an artefact of the methodology) but consider that it has been used in practice mainly to attack (and de-legitimise) scientific method with a view to either replacing it with rival ‘critical methods’ (to which obviously / thankfully there has been a lot of resistance) or – and I think this is where it becomes a bit more sinister – situating all psychological enquiry – including more traditional quantitative / qualitative enquiry – within a critical framework i.e. one that defers to feminist, progressive, social justice concerns.
      Part of the critical attack on quantitative scientific method has focused not only on the impossibility of objectivity but on the inevitability of agendas (including with respect to reproducing the ‘oppressive’ status quo, and the critical perspective has quite successfully argued for the prioritisation of feminist / anti-oppressive agendas based on that critique. So it’s all very well to say there are a lot of priming studies being done, but what agenda are those priming studies being used to promote: the response time of sexist males to judgements about female authority? Maybe it doesn’t do to generalise too much but it seems to me that the poison of feminist and/ critical approaches has vitiated the social sciences as a whole.

  20. You must be a terrible grad student. How is psychology unscientific if it’s based in the scientific method?

    1. I think the article is attacking critical psychology which is in part an attack on scientific method at least as it has traditionally been done. it is sometimes virulently anti-quantitative

    2. How the hell is it based on the scientific method? It’s virtually all hokus pokus.
      You cannot claim to be properly conducting isolated independently verifiable experiments to prove anything in the field so how is it scientific?
      How do you objectively measure feelings?

      1. Eh? I think you’re confusing psychology with something else. Have you ever taken a psychology class or read a psych literature paper? Psychology isn’t about “feelings”, its about the mind and behavior. The field of psychology is pretty broad and covers areas like behavioral neuroscience to psycholinguistics to psychopathology to social psychology. It provides the “why” and the “how” of our thinking processes and help to understand, for example, the mechanisms of how we learn to read and speak. It also helps to provide understanding of how and why we act within our environments, the variables that effect our behavior.
        This understanding is gained through scientific inquiry. Anyone getting a PhD in psych has to have advanced level knowledge and experience of designing, conducting and analyzing research studies (including a very advanced knowledge of stats). In order to be published, you have to go through a very rigorous peer review process.
        You can certainly design studies to isolate certain variables and minimize extraneous variables, and then run stats that will control for confounding. As part of the peer review process, the validity and reliability of your research will be judged.

  21. >Spend all day browsing the internet and complaining about women? All of the above.
    On a site frequented mostly by men that complains about women. Uh.

  22. I like psychology and think it has a lot to offer. However, it has been claimed and distorted by the SJW crowd. I would like to see a reclamation of psych that doesnt just regress to old ways but takes the legit modern theories and models and discards the modern SJW, LGBT or whatever poisoning.

    1. In the early to mid nineties, there were some really good break-throughs and cutting edge programs in behavioral psych that were really getting some tangible results. This was a time when you took pride in the fact that you were “working yourself out of a job” so to speak.
      Then, in the late 90’s there was a shift. It was no longer “the psychological field”, but it became the “mental healthcare industry.” Staff was cut, programs were cut, new laws and regulations were written that pretty much castrated any kind of behavior mod curricula. The result? Methods that had a modicum of success didn’t stick, and new age pseudo-scientific methods came in that didn’t work, and a whole plethora of repeat customers. I burned out quick and quit in 2000. I am so glad I didn’t invest any money and time in getting a degree in that field before it went to shit.

  23. Absolutely spot-on. I spent the better part of a decade in a doctoral psych program and finally got fed up with being forced to do mental acrobatics to accommodate a “science” built on feminist fiction.

  24. Ok, so I went on to the Animus website (the advertiser who sponsored this article) and they literally have an article on there entitled “why American women are the best women.” And in that article, the author states “unlike most people who write about sexual politics, I actually leave my apartment,” and then goes on to state that American women are superior to foreign women because of their “individualism.”
    Get that bullshit out of here, Roosh.

  25. Psychology, specifically evolutionary Psychology, has ridiculous potential. Also, much credit should be given to any successful military leader in history. Warrior culture is deeply tied to a good grasp of psychology that, while it may be lacking in hard numbers, seems to work incredibly well.

  26. Great points. It leads to justifying Relativism, which is the basic reason things are a bad as they are today.

  27. When still a young man, there was this guy who used to force himself on our group of freinds. Everywhere we’d go, he’d find out and show up. He’d been diagnosed schzoprenic with drug depency, and all he did was start fights and cause a lot of mayhem everytime he caught up with us. People in the neighborhood tried to placate him, they tried reasoning, everthing. That only made him more troublesome (Note: Like all abusers, he did what he knew he could get away with.) So one day we’d had enough and beat the living shit out of him. After that he’d still come around, but the most docile and nicest person to everyone. Force meets force.
    How is a treatment strategy like this not been considered?

  28. Article is legit. At one point I went to see a therapist do deal with stress etc. Turns out, just needed someone to voice all my fked up thoughts too. Mostly how people I dealt with everyday are fking fagtards. After I got it all out of my system and changed my perspective on myself, the sessions turned into me thinking the same about my therapist and realizing the field is complete bullshit. Literal pseudoscience trying to excuse people’s ineptitude by saying theirs some shit missing in this brain. Foh.

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