What I am about to say will quite probably shock and offend a great number of readers, unpleasant facts often do. I will say in the following pages the following very simple and I will show undeniable propositions:
1. Psychology (and psychiatry) is not a science;
2. The New Zealand legal system and many others base many rulings in family law, mental health law and criminal law on the opinion of so called experts in psychology – this inevitably leads to miscarriages of justice because, on the basis of argument, there cannot be experts in this field as it is not a science hence – expertise in this field is equivalent or equal to recognizing experts in alchemy or occult magic. The acceptance of psychological and psychiatric opinion as expert is therefore as a matter of logic in many cases a breach of the High Court Rules on expert evidence. My conclusion will be that the judicial function is being eroded by “psychologic”.
Before I embark on a discussion of all the above propositions, I would like to say a little about the credentials of CCHR and myself, so that I can qualify each as to at least the right for this particular opinion to be heard.
CCHR (The Citizens Commission on Human Rights) was founded as an international watchdog to expose the abuse of psychology and psychiatry worldwide. Its members consist of prominent judges and Human rights lawyers around the world, and one of its founding members is Professor Szazz, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and a world authority on the history and abuse of psychiatry and psychology. CCHR has exposed abuses in psychiatry in many countries leading to parliamentary enquiries, investigations, class actions and the exposure of human rights abuses. In Australia their work has been seminal in exposure of the Chelmsford deep sleep therapy cases, which had caused the deaths of many patients, and in New Zealand they have exposed the Lake Alice psychiatric institution.
My credentials are a degree in psychology with a lifelong interest in the subject, a degree in philosophy (centered on the study of psychology and psychoanalysis and the philosophy of the mind), a degree (several) in law and the practice of human rights law.
I wish to begin with proposition 1. Before I start, I want to reiterate that what I am about to say will be extremely “politically incorrect” and hence offensive to a lot of people who have worked in the field. This is because historically, and actually, psychology and the law are so interwoven that they are stakeholders in virtually the same system and hence determine “political correctness”. Therefore the statements about to be made are as offensive as throwing a pig’s ear into a mosque or telling the inquisition that witches don’t exist. I use these symbols deliberately because we are squarely in the realm of religion, not science. Psychology is literally the “study of the soul”; and here therefore I begin a very cursory foray into history because as the adage goes “those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it”.
Some of the first mental institutions were founded in the 16th century by the Church. During this initial phase, vast texts and formulas indicating categories of madness began to be written. At first these would have their source from the bible of the inquisition the Malleus Maleficarum, a book written for the identification of witches. This seminal work categorized types of madness by types of possession having for example possession by succubae (vampirical) type ghosts which drain the life energy of the mad – today called the neurotic) and incubi (demons of various ilk) which entered the possessed and caused them to behave in violent ways (in today’s terminology various types of psychosis).
1879 Wilhelm Wundt (the father of behaviorism) declared that the study of the soul was unscientific. Man hence after was to be studies like other animals, rats, monkeys etc. Interestingly then and now behaviorists refused to study the higher faculties such as higher thought, love, conscience, morality language etc but concentrated on the lower functions. The answer why Wundt and later behaviorists did not study the higher functions was simple – they had no way of studying or measuring them. Arising out of that simple leap in logic behaviorists today deny the existence of the higher emotions and simply call them conditioned reflexes, which are not able to be studied. Skinner one of the modern fathers of behaviorism was so enthusiastic that he placed his own daughter in a “skinner box” for the first formative years of her life to “train her”. His daughter became schizophrenic as a result but behaviorists never write about that. This school of thought behaviorism is the most influential of psychological schools and is taught in most New Zealand university courses on psychology as a “science” despite the fact that its methods and premises are really pseudoscience and they cannot predict human behavior nor successfully treat human emotional (mental) illnesses. Ask a behaviorist how stimulus response can explain the higher consciousness of an Einstein or the altruistic love of Buddha and they will change topics very quickly.
Behaviorism began the brave new world of “psycho-logic” whereby psychology began to be used to explain and justify political acts of oppression, discrimination and Human Rights breaches in the name of “Science”.
In 1800s Francis Galton coined the phrase “Eugenics” that was intended to provide a scientific basis for genetic selection. This theory took hold throughout the 19th century and was the precursor of US forced sterilization laws – those sterilized included criminals, addicts, lunatics and gypsies. Under these laws in the US, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway forcibly sterilized 164,500 people.
Non-conformism began to be redefined as mental illness and torture justified as treatment. Hence for example the whipping of slaves was a “cure” or “therapy” for what psychologists defined as a mental disease called (drapetomania – dreaptes – meaning runaway slave-mania meaning crazy). In 1940s onwards Soviet psychiatrists coined the term “sluggish schizophrenia” to define all political dissidents.
In modern day China, the Chinese Communists Party has incarcerated millions of Falun Gong practitioners in mental institutions for treatment of a new mental disease called “delusions of reform”. Attached to these mental institutions are hospitals removing the organs of those who do not renounce their beliefs and are not able to be cured.
The misuse of psychology and psychiatry is, however, universal and not confined to so called totalitarian states: Indeed the goals and aims of the institutionalization of psychology is best stated by British military psychologist J. R. Rees, who in 1940, addressed the UK’s national counsel for mental hygiene describing the goals of psychiatry as the infiltration of key sectors of society: politics, law, the church medicine and education. In 1945, psychiatrist J. Brock Chisholm was influential in calling for a “reinterpretation and eventual eradication of right and wrong”. His aim he declared was to eliminate morality and to herald a new age where all human behavior would be seen in terms of illness and adjustment. In 1948 Rees and Chisholm founded WFMH (the World Federation for Mental Health) which has advised governments around the world on policies for mental health and the need to fund ever increasing and interventionist mental health programmers in mental institutions, prisons, schools, universities and military. The WFMH saved the majority of Nazi psychiatrists from prosecution and trial. These psychiatrists then promulgated laws in many countries around the world protecting psychiatrists from persecution by mental health laws virtually absolving psychiatrists from criminal or civil liability for any “treatments” occurring in practice or in mental institutions. In the United States alone more people have been killed in mental asylums then in the Second World War with almost no criminal prosecutions.
The brutality and senselessness of “treatments” has not changed since the 16th century. For example, Electroshock therapy was first used in 1938 by Cerletti after watching pigs being electrocuted at slaughterhouses. It is still used today in many countries including New Zealand (2 million people each year receive it worldwide). As Lothar Kalinowsky, Cerlettis’s student stated in praise of ECT “All intellectual functions, grasp as well as memory and critical faculty are impaired”.
In 1936 in America Freeman performed lobotomies (an operation hammering an icepack through the eye socket into the brain). Freeman toured cities in a campervan called his lobotomobile performing operations on “mentally ill” at asylums and the general public. By the time operation ice pick ended 113,000 people had been lobotomized and a large number of these were “housewives” forcibly incarcerated in metal institutions by their husbands for depression or non-compliance. 10-20 per cent were killed as an “unfortunate” side effect of the operation. In introducing his miracle cure to the psychiatric and general community Walter Freeman said, “About 25% of lobotomized patients could be considered as adjusting at the level of a domestic invalid or household pet”. The lobotomy was a criminal act of grievous bodily harm or murder but no one has ever been prosecuted.
Since the 1950s the world psychiatric community has increasingly used drugs “treatment” as its choice because of the increasing monetary benefits and the greater public acceptance of “medicine”. Thorazine, described by psychiatrists as a “chemical lobotomy”, has killed or irreversibly damaged tens of thousands of people.
This launched a new era of psychiatric intervention into society whereby by 1960 a study showed that 48% of Americans had taken psychotropic substances via prescription. In 1967 Psychiatrists and doctors met in Puerto Rico to develop their plan for “psychotropic drugs in the year 2000: use by normal humans”. The report stated “those of us who work in this field see developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional states, mental functioning and will. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances ” Almost all currently prohibited substances (cocaine, heroine, amphetamines, mescaline, LSD, ecstasy) have been used by and promoted in psychiatry as prescription wonder drugs – there is no difference between prohibited and prescription drugs as history shows. Except one, governments have given psychiatrists the power to prescribe drugs to children and adults if necessary by force. Today thousands of children are prescribed Ritalin (kiddie Cocaine) for ADHD, a disorder which has absolutely no scientific basis. In the US, courts may remove children from mothers who refuse to give prescribed Ritalin to their children because this treatment is “in the child’s best interests”.
However, and these facts bring us full circle, the growth of the psychiatric drug industry is linked to the increasing diagnosis of mental illness. The DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders) which is the psychiatric bible and followed in New Zealand lists orders such as “reading disorder”, “disruptive behavior disorder”, “disorder of written expression”, “mathematics disorder” and hundreds of others. The DSM is financed by drug companies creating a 35 billion dollar drug industry.
And here is the point, you would think that some of this money would go into identifying and studying mental illness and that the DSM is based on decades of thorough scientific research, well think again, the DSM disorders reach entry into the manual simply by being voted on by psychiatrists. As Canadian psychologist Tana Dineen states, “Unlike medical diagnoses that convey a probable cause, appropriate treatment and likely prognosis, the disorders listed in DSM-IV are terms arrived at through peer consensus”.
One may ask – what has all of the above facts have to do with law? Simply the above facts are put forward in support of submission 2. The legal system draws its very lifeblood from language and definitions. Psychology has succeeded in providing these by impregnating the text context and subtext of law with “psychologic”. It has for example succeeded in calling drug pushing, murder, torture, and other crimes “treatments” and hence legitimizing them. The “experts” administering these “treatments” have become beyond the law and above it as they are the ones who will give evidence as to whether any “treatment” was legitimate. As the above will show they have to an increasing extent begun to replace the very judicial function itself because they have set the standards of human behavior and control. They are increasingly the only ones who really “know”.
New Zealand has not escaped this, indeed it appears that there is increasing legislative pressure to involve social workers, psychologist and psychiatrists in almost every facet off the legal system. There is almost an unquestioning acceptance that the various therapeutic courses offered by psychologists are necessary and beneficial and scientifically valid.
A prime example of this is the Lake Alice incident, whereby young problematic children (usually orphans) were incarcerated in a mental institution under dubious diagnoses such as “lack of insight”, “childhood schizophrenia” and ” rebellion against authority” and were subjected to arbitrary electric shock on private body parts by sadistic staff members who also sexually abused them. The methods of “treatment” included forced intramuscular injections of substances causing muscular seizures and pain shocks as punishment for smoking cigarettes. Because psychiatric staff did these atrocities in the name of “treatment” (behaviorist “scientific” aversion therapy) no one has been prosecuted despite the government’s implicit recognition (by way of settlements) that these things happened. These acts directly breached the United Convention Against Torture as well as many others.
Wrongful incarceration in mental institutions for adults, children and the elderly is unfortunately still occurring in New Zealand today based on incorrect, inaccurate psychiatric or psychological opinions. Today children are taken away from mothers by the Family Court based on psychologist’s reports on whether or not such mothers are able to parent their children properly. The Court appears to accept the “expertise” of social workers and psychologists without question despite the fact that many are taught that the family has no “scientific” value as an institution.
A case in point to illustrate the many like cases out there is the following:
The Family Court allowed CYFS to permanently remove a diabetic woman’s child who had been misdiagnosed by psychologist as mentally ill. She has been battling for six years to get the child back. The Family court would not rehear her case, it considered the matter closed. Before she had been to a large number of family law experts who basically advised her she cannot fight the system and must do “therapy” if she wants her child back. She did therapy for many years but that did not help because the therapist kept saying she had unresolved issues and was still mentally ill but now her child was “permanently paced”. The woman appealed to the High Court on the ground that the psychologist (who was not medically trained) could not be considered an expert in the cause of her behavior. The High Court who rejected the appeal based inter alia that she was a mentally ill woman and hence no error of law. The Court of Appeal refused to grant leave to appeal stating that there was no appealable error but allowed the Family Court (after five years) to re-look at it. The new Family Court judge was brave enough to commission a psychiatrists report, which stated clearly that not only had this woman been misdiagnosed but also the illness, which had been attributed to her, could not have been classified as mental illnesses.
The child has been placed in 14 different placements, and prescribed courses of “psychotherapy” so it could adjust to being removed. Contact with the mother was virtually prohibited for purposes of adjustment. Now the same psychologist who misdiagnosed her says that the child should not be returned and indeed all contact should be stopped because it has “adjusted” and it would be traumatic for the child. The “preferred theory” of the social workers is that contact with biological mothers of children removed permanently interferes with their adjustment and should be prevented. The Court has almost always accepted that opinion as scientific despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which gives the child a human right to know its biological parents and vice versa. But Human Rights are not “scientific” and not “psychological”.
In the Family Court system, the opinions of “psychologists/social workers” are sacrosanct because strangely they are rarely questioned. Parents are compelled to undertake an array of parenting and other courses when there is absolutely no evidence that such courses or counseling has any value. These courses simply serve as a basis to identify more “problems” and to feed more psychologists. Indeed if you took all the schools, breakaway schools and theories of psychology you would have difficulty counting them and you would find they don’t agree on virtually everything. I would be willing to place a wager that for any psychologist opinion on any subject of his/her “expertise” I would be able to find an equally qualified “expert” to say the opposite. That by the way is why they have “court recognized an exclusive and exclusionary list of “experts in the family court, so that no party can (without insurmountable difficulty) bring their ‘expert’ to challenge the Court’s expert unless their expert is also on the court’s list. This list of “experts” hold a monopoly on truth in the Family Court. It is convenient but it directly breaches section 27 of the Bill of Rights – the right to justice.
Interestingly the question whether or not psychology can be considered a science in the context of family proceedings was asked in the High Court in the case of K v K [2005] NZFLR 28. The Court stated, “Before the enactment of s 29A in 1980, the Courts approach to evidence given by psychologists was ambivalent… we refer, in particular to R v B, McMullen J said:
“As a precondition of admissibility the subject-matter to which the expert opinion relates must be a sufficiently recognized branch of science at the time the evidence is given”.
However, the Court went on to hold (at Para 41) that in the Family Court under section 29A “…Parliament chose to include psychologists in the three classes of disciplines from which professional reports could be requested under s 29A. Accordingly Parliament endorsed the use of psychological reports in cases involving custody, guardianship and access”.
Nevertheless the Court interestingly ruled that every “expert” giving evidence would have to be qualified as an expert in his particular field. Indeed if – as it is unarguably the case, that since psychology is not a science, then this begs the very question of how to qualify them as expert. But what is even worse is that psychologist in most cases give an opinion on what the outcome should be, i.e. they have made themselves experts on outcome.
However, I am not attempting to say that psychology and psychiatry are not useful in court proceedings, what I am saying is that their actions and opinions should never be allowed to replace the common sense, logic and humanity that is intended to imbue judicial method and decision making. A decision making which (at least in theory) should be fed from the great sea of international human rights treaties and jurisprudence forming the heritage of mankind. This (in far better words) is what our chief justice said in her speech at Bangalore on the subject of Human Rights and judicial review.
Psychology, like Christianity, is a religion and should be respected and treated one, like all religions it has both its darker and lighter elements, and like all religions it has tried to destroy any opposition to its doctrines and dogmas. But unlike other religions it has had the power to control the minds and opinions of politicians, judges and social workers and to destroy our long held beliefs about dignity, love, friendship, family and Honor, it has had the power to make us believe we are simply animals and reduced humanity to an archaic term. If we begin truly to believe these things as scientific, to truly accept that we are nothing but conditional rats in a box then we must likewise begin to accept that Justice and Freedom are nothing but words and Human Rights a question of history. When that day comes (as it already has many times) those who say the words I have spoken here will be the insane and the damned.
