STEVEN JAMES BARTLETT

ON PSYCHOLOGY

A View From a Philosopher-Psychologist

Steven James Bartlett

ike philosophy, the discipline of psychology has searched during its history for an adequate self-definition, and as in philosophy there are various definitions to choose among. The conception of psychology which in my view offers the most to humanity is less in fashion today than it was a century and more ago. It brings together a group of ideal objectives according to which psychology seeks to provide answers to an interrelated group of human needs: to provide an understanding of good psychological health, to enable us to respond intelligently, compassionately, and wisely to problems of living, and to offer a heightened degree of human psychological self-understanding that has no other essential purpose beyond itself.

Professional psychologists and students of psychology are today less aware and less in favor of these inclusive and ambitious objectives which the discipline has advocated in the past. As in most areas of study, over time there has been a narrowing of focus, an inclination to de-emphasize the “larger picture” and to attend instead to more easily and effectively solved specific, more modest, more narrowly defined problems that can, for example, be studied quantitatively in experimental psychology, understood statistically in behavioral psychology, or applied within the context of business concerns in industrial psychology.

Following much the same path, clinical psychology and psychiatry in the U.S., but somewhat less so in Europe, have been motivated to embrace a pragmatic attitude that concentrates on technical specificity rather than broad comprehension. We see this in attempts to identify and classify alleged “mental illnesses” with algorithmic exactness, leading to classifications that enumerate particular necessary and sufficient conditions for the application of diagnostic labels, which most frequently express no more than the voting preferences of the compilers of the latest expanded edition of the DSM. We see the same reductionist narrowing of focus in the rapid ascendancy of cognitive-behavioral therapy as a one-size-fits-all approach to treating problems of living.

As psychology gravitates increasingly toward a research model characterized by specificity, exactness, statistical implementation, and a taste for multiplying diagnostic classifications and sub-classifications, the discipline loses contact with the three more comprehensive goals mentioned in the opening paragraph. Those objectives are not likely to become less humanly important as a result of prevailing fashion, though the attractions of fashion lead to their neglect and a tendency for them to be forgotten.

As a reminder of the “larger picture” which psychology can offer, the following are some of the results to which my research in psychology has led: 

• The great majority of human problems of living have not been tied to known internal organic dysfunctions. The majority of the so-called “mental disorders” listed in the DSM have no evidence-based, organic sources; there are no known organic “disease entities” that can be pointed to. Instead, “mental disorders” are socially and politically engineered and reified constructs which are not simply “myths” as Thomas Szasz has argued, but express incoherent thinking, as shown in a variety of my publications (for more information, click here). 

• Once we recognize that the majority of “mental disorders” are no more than vested-interest, misleading projections of the symptomology of problems that people experience in life, the rational and compassionate way to help people is through individualized supportive care that responds to their individual situations, goals in life, abilities to learn, and diverse personalities (for further information, see my Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health, other publications cited there, and When You Don't Know Where to Turn: A Self-diagnosing Guide to Counseling and Therapy). 

• A variety of forms of internal limitation affect—and some decidedly afflict—the human psychological condition. Among these are to be found conceptual pathologies which lead to self-undermining thinking; a self-limiting psychology of mediocrity and often stupidity which resists growth, originality, and the recognition of individual differences; handicapping limitations which lead to attitudes and behavior inimical to culture and civilization; a self-inflated, grandiose conception of the human species that serves to justify limitless population growth and environmental depredation; and a psychology which blocks the recognition of animal rights. (For further discussion, see “On Internal Human Limitations.”) 

• The nature of human psychological disorders and the criteria used to recognize them have been inadequately and misleadingly understood. Current psychiatry and much of clinical psychology presume that deviation from psychological normality leads to “mental illness,” or, equivalently, that psychological normality is a valid standard for assessing good mental health. This presumption is virtually never challenged, and before my published work has not been subjected to book-length systematic criticism. The result of such a challenge is to realize that psychological normality, far from justifying its equation with good mental health, is frequently the source of predispositions that are, in a host of distinct ways, harmful and destructive. In order to define good psychological health we must look for standards beyond normality. (For further discussion, click here.) 

• Related to a recognition of pathologies of normality is a recognition that the psychology of the artist and of the creative, original thinker has been described and evaluated by contemporary psychology in an often distorted and falsifying manner. As a result of situating the defining locus of good mental health in normality, the psychology of the artist and original thinker has mistakenly been located outside the boundaries that define good mental health, with the effect of labeling many creative individuals “abnormal” and hence “mentally ill.” (For elaboration, see “The Abnormal Psychology of Creativity and the Pathology of Normality,” Chapter 3 in Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health.) 

The research results mentioned above comprise a few examples of work that pushes beyond the boundaries of the comfort zone of prevailing preferred beliefs that harden the categories of current thought and unnecessarily restrict the scope of understanding and applicability of contemporary psychology.

Related pages on this website include:

Internal Human Limitations

Toward a Critique of Normality

Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health

Conceptual Therapy

On Therapeutic Effectiveness

Human Pathology

The Pathology of Man