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Manufacturing Victims: What the Psychology Industry Is Doing to People Paperback – January 25, 2001

by Tana Dineen (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
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After thirty years in the profession, Dr. Tana Dineen has written an unflinching critique of modern Psychology and Psychotherapy. This controversial best-selling exposé of the Psychology Industry was first published in 1996. Now available in its revised, updated and less expensive 3rd edition, it is no less popular nor less explosive than when it first appeared. Cited in Time and the New York Times, among other wide-circulation publications, Tana Dineen's scathing attack on the abuses and misuses of corrupted psychotherapy is a must read for care-givers and care-takers alike. And for would-be care-takers too. Topics covered include Victim-Making, Fabricated Victims, Selling Psychology as a Science, The Business of Psychology, The Technology of Victim-Making, The Rise to Power of the Psychology Industry, and Living in the Shadow of the Psychology Industry. Fully supported by end of book notes and index, and with a suggested reading list, this is one of the most important books on psychology to appear in recent years. The author has been often--and always unsuccessfully--attacked by representatives of corporate psychology who have resorted to character assassination rather than reason to try and prove Dr. Dineen wrong.
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  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Robert Davies Pub
  4. Publication date
    January 25, 2001
  5. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1552070328
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1552070321
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

...argues that psychology has changed from a respectable academic discipline into an industry eager to sell its products... -- The Mail on Sunday (London)

Renegade psychologist dukes it out with feelings folks. -- Mark Sauer, San Diego Union-Tribune

Tana Dineen...arguably the planet's preeminent psychotherapy critic. -- Michael Roberts, Denver Westword

Tana Dineen...the woman who put psychology on the couch. -- Lynn McAuley, Ottawa Citizen

This gun is not for hire! Clinician slams the expert-witness racket. -- LA Daily Journal

About the Author

A former practicing psychologist and director of a psychiatric hospital in Canada, Tana Dineen holds both a Master's and Ph.D in Psychology.

After a long career in the field, Dr Dineen came to the conclusion that psychology, originally a science dedicated to the curing of serious pathology, has become diluted into what is now a broad range of pseudo-science and pseudo-therapy. Patients with little seriously wrong are offered therapy which is often of unproven value and kept on a payment string for as long as possible, focusing on what the therapist claims is wrong with them rather than what is right with them. From th adage of a cure for every ill, we have arrived at an ill for every cure and the ever-increasing use of psychology of little probatgive value in legal cases which often were no more based on scientific logic than the witch trials of centuries past became too much for Dr Dineen to stand. No longer believing psychology could reform itself from the inside, she left clinical practice and now runs a B&B in Victoria, British Columbia. She also writes several columns each month on various topics for Canadian newspapers.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Robert Davies Pub; 3rd edition (January 25, 2001)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1552070328
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1552070321
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 12.5 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 14 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Russ Bush
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Truth About the Malicious Pseudo Science of Psychology and It's Profiteers
    Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Although I have not finished this book yet, I must say that it does an excellent job of exposing the pseudo science of psychology and the damage done by the alleged scholars who practice these hideous falsehoods for profit. Shame on those who know the falsehood of psychology yet manufacture victims to line their pockets. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning the truth about this ruthless practice that has so enslaved our society today.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Ginger Rogers
    4.0 out of 5 stars Thought-provoking and worth reading.
    Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2010
    Verified Purchase
    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
    22 people found this helpful
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  • frank edward de smet
    5.0 out of 5 stars perversion of Justice through psycholog
    Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Fantastic book, with so much knowledge. Wish you could write about the abusive tactics used in the Canadian Judcial system by psychologists.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Eva B
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United States on November 3, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Very interesting and informative. Should be part of all psych students curriculum!
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Robert Sibley
    5.0 out of 5 stars Nation of Victims
    Reviewed in the United States on April 11, 2001
    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.
    117 people found this helpful
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