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Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People

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When a tragedy occurs at some school, office or worksite, policemen, firefighters, paramedics or rescue workers will rush to the scene to provide a much-needed service, saving lives. Increasingly, however, we see another so-called helping professional on the scene - the trauma or grief counsellor - who's been called in to save psyches.

Somehow, it's now the norm after every school shooting, car crash or airline disaster to bring in psychologists who, Moses-like, will lead those who survive the tragedy or even witnessed it to the promised land of "wellness." Somehow we've come to accept the idea that stranger with a few initials behind her name is needed to help us deal with the experience of violence or death.

Where did we ever get the infantile idea that after some tragedy - a parent's loss of a child, for example - we're supposed to be "healed"? Dr. Tana Dineen, in her book "Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry is Doing to People," answers to that question. And a fine and devastating answer it is. Well-researched, sharply focussed and leavened with numerous concrete examples, her critique of the profession of psychology should make you want to, well, burn your self-help books and motivational tapes.

The opening paragraph neatly sums up her argument: "Psychology presents itself as a concerned and caring profession working for the good of its clients, but the effects are damaged people, divided families, distorted justice, destroyed companies and a weakened nation."

That's a stinging indictment. And after you read Ms. Dineen's book you'll be hard pressed not to agree with it. Certainly, Dineen is careful to acknowledge that in the hands of dedicated researchers, psychology remains a respected field of scientific inquiry. The focus of her scorn is the clinical psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and sundry counsellors and mental health practitioners who distort or ignore the research and reduce it to ego-stroking psychobabble and feel-good placebos.

A PhD in psychology herself, Dineen spent nearly 20 years as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in Ontario. In the mid-1990s, she packed it in. As she put it in an interview: "I couldn't maintain my integrity in a profession that is almost devoid of integrity. This book is my apology for decades of biting my lip about the pernicious effects psychologists are having on individuals and society."

Perhaps her most explosive argument is that refuting the concept of recovered memories. Dineen cites numerous cases where people, usually men, have been falsely accused of sexual abuse crimes based on such "memories." According to Dineen, there is no reputable scientific evidence that these memories are anything more than fanciful inventions. Because of this and other misuses of research, Dineen says psychologists should be barred from testifying in court as "experts" on human behaviour. Indeed, most of what psychologists is little more that job-creation, she argues. Therapists need patients, so they create disorders with which they can label their erstwhile consumers. In this way everybody becomes "abnormal" and in need of treatment.

The industry is also fond of inflating symptoms far beyond the original condition they once described. For example, the word "trauma" once referred to a physical injury. But now, after much "semantic inflation," trauma covers anything that upsets us. Ditto for "addiction;" it no longer refers to drug or alcohol abuse, but also to sex and shopping.

Psychology may have once been part of science's laudatory effort to mitigate life's hardships, but Dineen ably demonstrates how the psychology industry has gone, well, crazy in its attempt to pathologize every aspect of the human condition and turn every upset into a "dis-ease" in need of therapeutic treatment.

What Dineen's book ultimately reveals is the steady sentimentalization of society. A sentimentalist is someone in denial, and what she denies is reality. The sentimentalist assumes that good ends can be achieved without effort, self-discipline, patience or sacrifice. Such sentimentalism might be tolerated if it were confined to a deluded few. But western societies increasingly driven by sentimentalists promoting social engineering schemes. We are a society that runs whining to politicians who'll feel out pain or, more often than not, to a therapist who'll assure us that we aren't stupid, lazy or greedy, but victims of poor parenting.

In our secularized world, psychotherapy has replaced religion in that, like religion, it is what we turn to to cope with the vagaries of existence. The difference, though, is that psychology, unlike religion, seeks to eliminate those experiences that define what it is to be human. At the core of human experience is the mystery of both the grandeur and the misery of self-conscious mortality. Unlike animals, humans know they will die. Yet, if we have courage, we also learn that our awareness of death gives life its juice and joy. It is because our lives are so painfully transient that they can be so achingly meaningful.

Psychotherapy seeks to deny those experiences that make us human. As such, it is a threat to our freedom. As philosopher Leon Kass puts it, the ultimate aim of psychotherapy is "to order human experience in terms of easy, predictable contentment." But if we are always haunted by death, there is the need for character and courage to live with what we know is ineradicable. Psychotherapy, however, makes emotional security easy by eradicating the need for moral virtue.

This has political consequences: Individuals freed from moral responsibility are no longer citizens, but patients or victims unable to manage their lives. As Dineen writes: "The psychology industry considers and treats people as children who, regardless of age, experience or status, must be protected, guided, sheltered and disciplined." But this smothering individual responsibility for the sake of self-esteem creates a depoliticized society of contented creatures who need only to be administered and kept passified.

And that, as far as I can see, is a form of tyranny, albeit a nice one. If so, Dineen's book provides the valuable service of exposing the threat to our freedom posed by all those trauma counsellors rushing to rescue our shivering psyches.

Dr. Dineen is certainly right when she attacks the many sloppy and poorly trained therapists in the world today. Psychology has become the new religion, and like all religions it has spawned a disturbing assortment of irrational cults. Foremost among them is "trauma theory"--the dogma that virtually all psychological problems stem from abuse and neglect in early childhood. The patient must, it follows, learn to hate the abusive parents and blame every disappointment and failure in life on them. What is not blamed on parents is blamed on "society" in general and on relatively trivial day to day traumas like finding a bug in your food, getting into a shouting match with your lover or having your purse snatched. The author is absolutely correct that there is no evidence that childhood experiences determine adult behavior, and that there are many people who have experienced far worse traumas than middle class Westerners could ever imagine and show no signs of psychopathology. Obviosly there is no need to bring everyone into the mental health system. There are those who need care and those who don't. Dineen exposes a virtual conspiracy among some mental health care providers to make everyone a patient and label everyone in society as fundamentally weak and flawed. Needless to say, I appreciated many aspects of this book. But before I sign off, I must complain about a few things. Dr. Dineen is great at criticizing the quack theories and fuzzy thinking others, but offers few suggestions about helping those who actually have mental illnesses. At times, she seems to shrug the whole issue off. It is clear from the book that she does not take the approach of Thomas Szasz and deny that mental illness exists. For example, she refers to schizophrenia as a biological condition, which it is. I was a little uncertain, however, about where she stands on clinical depression, manic depression and the various anxiety disorders like O.C.D Her tone seems very critical of anyone who is in treatment for any kind of "neurotic" disorder. However, the same type of modern brain research which proved that schizophrenia is a brain disease suggests the same thing about many types of depression and anxiety disorders. They are really not "neuroses" or psychological problems in adjustment at all. When a person suffering from clinical depression is lying in bed sobbing and unable to get shower or get dressed, it is not because they are lazy or weak. It is because they have a chemical imbalance that makes their thinking disorganized and their feelings oversensitive. Dineen seems to ignore most of the brain science revolution in the past two decades. Instead of abandoning quack "trauma" therapy for genuine empirical facts about human behaviors and the illnesses which can effect them, she opts for a lot of old platitudes about vaguely defined "personal responsibility." But being told to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and keep your chin up can no more cure clinical depression than it can anemia or diabetes. To put it another way, lets say you have panic attacks. A run of the mill trauma therapist would blame your parents and say that maybe they had frightened and terrorized you as a child, and if you hated and rejected them enough you would be well. Dr. Dineen, it seems, would just consider you lazy and irresponsible and tell you to get a life. Both approaches would cause more harm than good. When it comes to psychiatric illness, it is not profitable to blame your parents or yourself--get medical care and adjust the flawed brain chemistry. Also get a good non-judgmental therapist to practice supportive therapy if you are in a crisis period. Dineen gets so caught up in bashing her opponants that she forgot to guide people who actually need mental health care in the right direction.

What some readers have been saying about MANUFACTURING VICTIMS: "This book is dynamite and I can't wait to see the reaction. Manufacturing Victims is a sizzling expose of the Psychology Industry. While showing tremendous compassion towards real victims of rape, accidents and torture, Dr. Tana Dineen skillfully takes the Psychology Industry to task for destroying families, promoting hostile views of men and women, promoting distrust and suspicion, and misusing science." Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Professor of Psychology, University of Washington, co-author, The Myth of Repressed Memory "Manufacturing Victims is a spirited and deeply principled critique of the inanities and abuses of contemporary psychology. Let us hope it serves as a welcome antidote for our society's spreading addiction to toxic therapy." Theodore Roszak, author,The Making of a Counter Culture "A devastating critique of the business of psychotherapy. Well done. Badly needed. Long overdue. It will make a lot of people mad. I hope it makes them take a hard look at the sins of the profession. Dr. Sam Keen, former editor, Psychology Today, author, A Fire in the Belly "This penetrating, insightful and carefully documented expose will add depth and power to the national chorus of voices calling for legislative reform of the mental health industry. Dr. Dineen has performed a major service to vulnerable consumers and taxpayers who are too often called upon to bear the burdens of dangerous experimental procedures and other forms of consumer fraud disguised as `mental health treatment.'" Prof. R. Christopher Barden, President, National Associationfor Consumer Protection in Mental Health Practices "As many of us are aware, many clinical psychologists and psychriatists are `manufacturing victims,' and living off their creations, who are, sadly, real people. All of us concerned with what is going on can profit greatly from reading this book cover to cover." Dr. Robyn Dawes, Acting Department Head, Department ofSocial and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University,author, House of Cards: Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth

Anyone who is a psychologist should read this. Tana is so sensible and so right. Readers who like this book will also enjoy 'Destructive trends in mental health.' The profession of psychology needs to take a close look at itself.

Make certain to read this book -- it injects a healthy dose of reality into the popular view of psychology. It also points out the many angles from which psychology bombards the average consumer. The necessity for psychology is ingrained in Americans, and for a person to reject its "truths" is so shocking, we must conclude that the person is in denial.

Note to the editors: the past tense of "LEAD a horse to water" is "LED a horse to water."

A hair rising work indeed. Are we only surrounded by criminals who want
our money and health? The author worked hard as a Dr. of psychology to
produce good fruits of her business, but all that came out was shocking.
She says that psychology presents itself as a concerned and caring
profession working for the good of the clients. But in its wake lie
damaged people, divided families, distorted justice, destroyed companies
and a weakened society. Behind the benevolent façade is a voracious
self-deserving industry that proffers facts which are often unfounded,
provides therapy which can be damaging to its recipients, and exerts
influence which is having devastating effects on the social fabric.
The foundation of modern psychology, its questioning, has at the very
least been largely abandoned in favour of power and profit, leaving only
the guise of integrity, a show of arrogance and a well-tuned attention
to the bottom line. "What seemed once a responsible profession is now a
big business whose success is directly related to how many people become
users."
No matter where one turns, one finds the effects of the psychology
industry. Its influence extends across all aspects of life, telling us
how to work, how to live, how to love and, even, how to play. We are
confronted by psychologists expounding their theories on the endless
list of TV talk-shows.
It is not new that psychology has become an influential force or that
society is becoming more and more filled with people who consider
themselves victims of one sort or other. But the author shows that new
is that psychology is itself manufacturing most of these victims, that
it is doing this with motives based on power and profit, and that the
industry turns people into dependent "users", with no escape from
their problems. The psychiatrist Garth Wood goes even further in his
book "Overcoming the illness excuse when he says that "what has become
big business is in fact a fraud. The evidence does not support the
claims of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy." Possibly most
people do not want the alternative. They want to escape from their
spiritual problems because a change to the better would entail changing
their hearts. Who wants this?

I was a Psychology major in college back in the early 60's but pursued marriage rather than a career. But, then, there is absolutely nothing one can do with a BA in Psychology. Still,I felt deceived and totally let down by my studies and remember leaving college thinking that Psychology is scientifically inexact and based primarily on the whimsical thought of its promoters. Because it leaves God totally out of its equations for mental and emotional health, there is no foundation of truth for its conclusions. And though I have continued to be fascinated by writings on the pursuit of mental health, I decided it was not in me to fulfill my former desire of becoming a paid, professional counselor if all I had to go on was the flimflam of introspective theory. How refreshing to discover this book which confirms my point of view!

The book is well researched and documented and includes many case studies that make for an interesting read. It has had a profound effect on my life in causing me to be more open to people as they are and allowing them the grace to come through the hardships in their own lives without imposing on them labels and unfounded prognoses. Further, MANFACTURING VICTIMS caused me to shed all residual co-dependent tendencies by seeing how much harm is done to others when we make them think they need us to solve life's problems. Being available to others is one thing; making ourselves indispensable robs them of all opportunity to grow and develop through their afflictions.

Virginia Rogers

<And when I recently read that 400,000 American children are on Prozac, and that the company has requested permission to market coloured and flavoured Prozac pills (=candy) for children> Yup, those darn sickos at Lilly! I don't know where you got your info, but it's pretty doubtful that Lilly would apply for this since they've only done clinical tests on patients 18 or over. Also, I happen to know an expert in adolescent psychiatry and he says Prozac could actually have the opposite effect on pre-teens.