Chapter 5: Psychology

[bookhobbit]

The Flavor of the Week for this chapter is, I believe, the topic of mind-body dualism. This is really less psychology and more philosophy, but that has never stopped Noebel before. It's really striking as I move through this textbook how much each chapter is less "the worldviews' take on A Discipline" and more "the worldviews' take on An Issue". I think it would have been much more sensible if outright organized as issues, not as disciplines. Right now it feels blustery because of its attempts to represent disciplines as single issues, because it really didn't need to be that way.

 

Anyway, we start like this:

Psychology, true to its origin (Greek "psyche"), is the study of the soul—and no worldview other than Christianity has truer insight into the spiritual realm.

Yeah. That's not what psychology is.

Especially after you have examined Marxist, Humanist, and Postmodern psychologies and touched on still other theories of secular psychology, you may be tempted to conclude that psychology is a discipline unworthy of your attention. William Kirk Kilpatrick boldly declares, "If you're talking about Christianity, it is much truer to say that psychology and religion are competing faiths. If you seriously hold to one set of values, you will logically have to reject the other."' [...] As Kilpatrick says, "In short, although Christianity is more than a psychology, it happens to be better psychology than psychology is."

This is how bad it is in fundamentalism. The rejection of any science that doesn't wholeheartedly agree with the most literal interpretation of the Bible extends to psychology, which really doesn't conflict with a literal interpretation of the Bible, simply because most fundamentalists think that psychology's view of humanity is unBiblical. 

Again, I want to make it clear that "science" as it's usually understood is not all there is to human understanding, and it's very imperialist to say so. But the point is that fundamentalists don't reject "science" as a whole. Just the parts they don't like. They wholeheartedly embrace the stuff they do like and use it to prove the ~superiority~ of the "West". So understand that my objections are not rooted in "everyone should believe and agree with modern 'science'" but rather in "these specific people are incredibly hypocritical and controlling, and have a special relationship to modern 'science' that cannot be understood outside their own ties to white supremacy".

Anyway, then there's a whole paragraph about how god is a person and people have personalities related to the personhood of God, which is totally irrelevant to psychology. And then we're talking about the existence of the soul, which, again, not really a fundamental question of psychology. There's a lot about how the Bible says we are more than just a physical body.

Sir John Eccles, one of the world's most respected neuro-physiologists, believes mind and body dualism is the only explanation for many of the phenomena of consciousness. 

Not really the Christian kind, though.

 

The point is that because the physical substance of the brain is constantly changing, no unity of identity could exist if consciousness were a condition wholly dependent on the physical brain.

Hm. I'm not sure I agree with this because constant change but some unity of identity is such a persistent property of social systems. Besides, we as people are also constantly changing.

Arthur Custance writes, "What research has shown thus far is that there is no precise one-to-one relationship between any fragment of memory and the nerve cells in which it is supposed to be encoded."

Custance was a physiologist most active in the 50s-70s and is best known for advocating gap creationism. Not cutting-edge neuroscience we're citing here. (Not to imply that there IS a one-to-one relationship between any fragment of memory and the nerve cells they're supposed to be encoded in, but I doubt that's even an expectation anymore.)

There's a quotation from Bruce Almighty, a 2003 Jim Carey film. Fundamentalists really hated this film because it was allegedly blasphemous and it was given, in my community, a disproportionate amount of scaremongering relative to its actual popularity. People acted like it was luring children away from God but I don't think I've heard anyone mention it since about, uhhhh, 2006?

There's also THIS Pop Culture Connection: References to the fall, explicit or implied, are

abundant in literature, music, film, and the visual arts. Mankind's fall is depicted in classical works of Milton, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Chopin, and Beethoven, to name a few. More recent pop culture expressions, not necessarily from a Biblical worldview, include:

• Fallen — a 1998 film starring Denzel Washington, John Goodman, and Donald Sutherland

• Dear God— a song by Sarah McLachlan from her 2003 album Afterglow (remake of the 1986 XTC song of the same name)

• Fallen — a hit 2003 musical album by Gothic rock band Evanescence

• The Fallen — a song by Scottish alternative rock band Franz Ferdinand from their 2005 album You Could Have It So Much Better the Garden of Eden.

THIS IS SO FUNNY I'M SORRY. "Not necessarily from a Biblical worldview." The Fundamentalist view of what pop culture is Important for the early 2000s. This is such a random collection of things! I mean, if I had to pick a pop culture expression that thematically deals with the Fall I would probably go for something like Good Omens. These are all pretty vague.

Okay, there's a chunk coming up that's absolutely crucial for understanding the fundamentalist view of humanity. I'm going to need to quote a lot of it and go through it piece by piece.

This understanding of our sinful bent [the Fall] is critical for understanding our human nature and our mental processes. Our revolt against God caused a dramatic, reality-shattering change in our relationship to the rest of existence and even to ourselves. This change has severe ramifications for all aspects of reality, including psychology. In fact, our sinful nature—our desire to rebel against God and our fellow beings—is the source of all psychological problems according to the Christian view.

All psychological problems are sin. You can imagine what it's like to have a mental illness in this kind of community. I grew up a very anxious child regularly hearing sermons that it was sinful to feel anxiety because God had a handle on it and you shouldn't worry. When I developed depression, my mother bought me Bible study books. She wanted me to go counseling with the church pastor. This is very much a happy ending compared to a lot of people's stories because I was able to refuse counseling and put off reading the books without consequences worse than her being angry with me at intervals because I was crying in church. Not everyone is so lucky.

Francis A. Schaeffer says, "The basic psychological problem is trying to be what we are not, and trying to carry what we cannot carry. Most of all, the basic problem is not being willing to be the creatures we are before the Creator. Instead, we want to be God. Creaturehood is too confining, especially when it comes to making the rules—which to a great extent is the heart of the matter. Remember, it is the heart that says there is no God (Psalm 14:1). It is the heart that is deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9)."

This section is perhaps the most triggering thing I've encountered in critiquing this book so far. It's so central for understanding the fundamentalist worldview and the ways in which it catches you both coming and going. There's no way for you to know what's best for you; only God can know what's best for you. You're a wilful child, and you have to listen to your elders/betters/God. You might think you're happy in your sin, but that's your will, not reality. You can't know who you are, and if you think you do, that in and of itself is a sign of sin. Self-definition outside religion, personhood outside God, is a sign of pride.

Further, only Christianity provides a framework in which we are truly held responsible for our thoughts and actions. "The great benefit of the doctrine of sin," says Paul Vitz, "is that it reintroduces responsibility for our own behavior, responsibility for changing as well as giving meaning to our condition.""

If you do something wrong it's your fault and you know it. You have to fix it and you're not allowed to have any excuses or compassion because you knew it was wrong and you have to change it. I am obsessed with taking responsibility for everything bad that happens to me or in my vicinity because of this view, because I know everything bad that happens is my fault and my responsibility and to say it's not is cowardly and evading responsibility. It's really hard to write about this because it's still extremely upsetting for me to think about. 

If the Christian view of human nature is correct, then only Christianity can develop a true, meaningful, and workable psychology because only Christianity recognizes the problem of the heart, mind, and will in relation to God. [...] Only Christian psychology perceives human nature in a way that is consistent with reality and capable of speaking to our most difficult problems — sin problems.

IF the Christian view of human nature is correct....only Christianity is consistent with reality. So we're just taking it for granted that it's correct, then? On what evidence?

It's this way they have of treating everybody like a wayward child. If you don't agree, you're rebellious and don't know what's good for you. It completely invalidates everything you can ever know about yourself. I can't talk to my mom about being trans because I know she would pull these arguments out, and I know how much it would make me feel like my footing is being cut out from under me.

The next bit is about psychological vs "real" guilt.

Both Humanists and Marxists speak only of "psychological guilt" because for them only society is evil—people do nothing individually that would incur actual guilt. For the Christian, however, each time someone rebels against God, he or she is committing a sin and the feeling of guilt that results from this rebellion is entirely justified.

I think this is a false distinction and I'm also not sure that's true about Humanists and Marxists. I think most people in general, Christian or not, would acknowledge that guilt happens when you do something you know you shouldn't, like, idk, cuss out someone who didn't do anything to hurt you. We know that's a hurtful thing to do to another person, and we don't want to hurt other people, usually, so we feel guilt. It's not less real just because it's not rooted in Christianity.

Christianity understands our nature, including why this guilt arises and how to deal with it. While other schools of psychology must invent fancy terms (for example, social maladjustment) to explain away the existence of real guilt as a result of real sin, Christian psychology deals with the problem at its roots—the human heart, mind, and soul.

"Social maladjustment" is not a synonym for "guilt" or an explanation for feelings of guilt. They have nothing to do with each other except insofar as acts generally classified this way are usually things Christians think you should feel guilty for.

Modem secular psychologists often speak of mental illness. Yet many Christian psychologists deny the existence of a large proportion of mental illnesses.

Yeah. The mere concept of mental illness is "evading responsibility", unless there's some kind of physical reason for it (tumors and "chemical imbalances" are mentioned). Things like serotonin and dopamine relating to mental illness have made fundamentalists' view of what's got a "physical reason" and what doesn't complicated -- there's a lot of disagreement. But often, in practice, if your GP isn't referring you to a neurologist, you don't have an illness, you have a sin.

"The fundamental bent of fallen human nature is away from God . . . Apart from organically generated difficulties, the 'mentally ill' are really people with unsolved personal problems."

Note that unsolved personal problems are here equated with sin. This is a quote from Jay Adams, author of a 1970 manual on Christian counseling. He has a PhD in Speech and absolutely no training as a mental health professional. He pioneered nouthetic counseling, now more commonly known as Biblical Counseling, whose aim is "to effect change in the counselee by encouraging greater conformity to the principles of Scripture".

This view follows logically from the Christian perception of human nature: we have rebelled against God, we have real guilt feelings about this rebellion, and so we must reconcile ourselves with God or face unsolved personal problems.

It's interesting to me how much overlap there is between Christians who believe that all humans are inherently sinful and guilty because of Eve's sin and have to repent and turn to God to be cleansed and Christians who say things like "Racism is in the past! Why should we care about something that happened in the past?" You'd think a group of people who believe in hereditary sin would be okay with the concept of reparations, right?

If the Christian psychologist denies the existence of most mental illnesses, what good is Christian psychology? That is, how can the Christian psychologist propose to help people if he or she views their mental problems as spiritual problems caused by alienation from God? Doesn't this view place too much guilt on people and avoid any real therapy? 

He doesn't answer these questions, by the way.

If by the word therapy we mean consciousness-raising seminars or primal scream workshops, then it is true the Christian psychologist does away with therapy. 

Note the way that therapy is reduced to "consciousness-raising seminars or primal scream workshops". I have many problems with the psychiatric institution as a whole, but this is incredibly dismissive and misleading.

The Christian psychologist, then, must stress personal moral responsibility. Without this responsibility, we may deny any real guilt caused by our sins and thereby avoid the heart of our problem—our alienation from God. Only through recognizing our sinful nature and guilt before God can we reconcile our guilt feelings with reality.

The core argument here is "people feel bad and do bad things because they are bad and sinful and guilty". This has HUGE implications for the fundamentalist view of structural inequality and social welfare. From their perspective, anyone who commits any kind of crime or even an act they think should be a crime is sinful and can only be redeemed through repentance. This means that harm reduction measures (like providing clean needles for drug users) are incredibly unpopular among fundamentalists. It's not about the money being spent; it's about the fact that, to fundamentalists, harm reduction is taking away responsibility and enabling people -- encouraging sin. Women have children out of wedlock? That's a sin, and providing abortion or sometimes even birth control is bad because it takes away the punishment. There's absolutely no way that a racist, classist society could lead to marginalized people committing crimes out of desperation because crime is a result of sin and inherent badness. That kind of thing.

Anyway, I don't know what it means to "reconcile our guilt feelings with reality", but I do know that I basically feel guilty for existing because of the way that I was raised, so the situation is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This may seem like a rather insensitive approach to helping people with very sensitive problems. But what could be more cruel than treating merely a symptom of the problem and ignoring the actual sickness? Who would fault a doctor for giving patients a shot to fight a disease rather than a cough drop to mask a symptom?

Note the way that therapy or even psychiatric medications are viewed as "a cough drop" to "mask a symptom". In other words, mental illness is a symptom of sin.

The first step for the Christian psychologist in dealing with many mental and spiritual problems is to hold each client personally responsible for his or her sin.

Translation: your mental illness is your fault.

This is the key for all Christian healing of mental illnesses that are not organically caused: confession of sin, forgiveness of sin through Christ (1 John 1:9), reconciliation with God (2 Corinthians 5:17-21), and sanctification through the disciplining work of God's Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:23; Hebrews 12:1-11). 

Translation: the only treatment for mental illness is God.

Now we're onto the problem of suffering. Noebel says that secular approaches to psychology attempt to remove suffering entirely, but:

In contrast, Christian psychology believes that God can use suffering to bring about positive changes. This difference between secular and Christian psychology has serious implications. For the non-Christian, suffering is a harsh reality that must be avoided at all costs; for the Christian, suffering may be used by God to discipline and lead us—indeed, Christians are sometimes called to plunge joyously into suffering in obedience to God.

So this chapter is making me confront all of my personal issues at once, apparently.

Meaning in suffering is a feature unique to Christian psychology.

I think not. Humans have been looking for meaning in suffering probably since we've been able to think.

According to Time, the field of psychology is rethinking and retooling. Instead of constantly dwelling on what makes people mentally ill, the shift is toward what makes people mentally healthy, positive, joyful, and happy to be alive.

I find it weird to portray psychologists as "constantly dwelling on what makes people mentally ill", as though it's a morbid tendency. Can you imagine if these people were like "I think heart doctors should stop dwelling on what makes people get heart disease." Although obviously the medicalization of mental states is not an unalloyed good, pathologization etc etc, but this is such a weird way to frame it. 

Anyway there's a whole section on how religion makes people happier. I can believe it! It can give your life meaning, which is important to mental wellbeing. But if it was really proof that Christianity is Real, presumably Christianity would have some kind of advantage, which the article they're quoting doesn't say. Also, joining a religion because you think you'll be sent to hell otherwise is not a happy-making motivation.

Then some stuff about how if you're mentally ill you should Focus On Positive Things and that having the fruits of the spirit keep you from being mentally ill. In other words, if you're mentally ill, it's because you're not a good enough person.

Vitz sees this move as hopeful for Christian psychology because the emphasis could be returning "to theology and philosophy" instead of toward a more secular ideal that he feels is withering on the vine along with secularism itself.

Christ. What we need in psychology is more theology and philosophy apparently.

However, as Christians, we need to stay alert to so-called self-help psychologies that change often and that insist that to be happy, healthy, and spiritual we must forget the past, live in the present moment, abolish morality, or rearrange the marriage ceremony.

"Abolish morality, or rearrange the marriage ceremony" is a dogwhistle I can best sum up as signifying "queer people, premarital sex, and feminism".

It is God who forgives our sins, heals our sinful human nature, and replaces our guilty consciences with the fruit of the Spirit—it is nothing that we do in our own strength.

Yeah. None of your achievements are yours because they all actually just belong to God.

An offshoot of this perspective is that Christians view society as the result of individuals' actions—that is, individuals are understood to be responsible for the evils in society. [...] For the Christian, blaming individual sins on society is a cop-out.

Another important thing for understanding fundamentalist politics. Blaming structural factors for individual failure to succeed is "a cop-out", so you're not allowed to talk about things like misogyny, racism, cisheterosexism, or classism.

Further, Christians who properly understand human nature might never need to seek professional counseling—they might maintain spiritual well-being by remaining in submission to Christ. Christians either believe God when He says He has dealt with the sin problem through the sacrifice of His Son, or do not.

And if they do, there's no way they'll have personal problems they need help with!

Schaeffer outlines a simple approach to what he calls "positive psychological hygiene"— "As a Christian, instead of putting myself in practice at the center of the universe, I must do something else. This is not only right, and the failure to do so is not only sin, but it is important for me personally in this life. I must think after God, and I must will after God." To "will after God" is not to think too highly of ourselves, "but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than themselves".

If you're mentally ill it's because you're selfish and self-centered. Also, having self-esteem is sinful.

The choice between Christian psychology and all other psychological schools is clear-cut. As Kilpatrick says, "Our choice ... is really the same choice offered to Adam and Eve: either we trust God, or we take the serpent's word that we can make ourselves into gods."

You see the false dichotomy there? Either you shun all possible counseling help other than "God will fix it, get less sinful" OR you're making yourself into a god.

Onto Islam, and I've never been so grateful to type that. This was long and really did a number on me, so the next sections might be short, as was the case with Biology.

Basically, Noebel says that Islam is like Christianity except it doesn't think that humans are made in the image of God. He says, "Muslims see us as slaves of God" and that "Jesus deemed to call Christians His siblings rather than mere slaves". I guess Paul doesn't count for anything? There's a very racist extract from Hildago, where a character is referred to only as "the Muslim".  

He also states that Islam doesn't believe in the idea of hereditary sin, and clearly intends for me to be scandalized, but after the intensity of the last section I'm emotional thinking about a monotheist theology with a concept of sin that goes "hey, you're only responsible for your own sin, you're not inherently sinful just because you're a human!", so right now I feel extremely warm towards all the Muslim theologists he's quoting. Also he says that they reject the idea that Jesus died for everyone's sins, likewise, which makes sense because if the central thesis of your belief about sin is "you just have responsibility for your own and no one else's", the whole Jesus died on the cross thing wouldn't make much sense. Good for them for the logical consistency.

The good deeds required of Muslims (circumcision, prayer five times a day, a pilgrimage to Mecca, avoiding pork, etc.) as well as the motivation to accomplish them stand in contrast to the good deeds required of Christians

This is so fucking hypocritical for so many reasons but especially because over half of American cis men are circumcised. It's also so reductive and trivializing, acting like those things are silly without going into their context. There's no way that Noebel could be like "both Christianity and Islam require obedience to God!" No, he has to contrast them even when it doesn't make sense.

And then, oh god, we have jihad again. Noebel says that only "death in jihad" will result in assurance of salvation. I'm not even going to debunk this one again, I've linked stuff about it in previous sections, but he keeps harping on it and I find it incredibly cruel. This is almost his only tool: he just keeps going jihad! jihad! jihad! To be fair, that is true of many islamophobes, so I guess he's not special.

Some stuff about how Jesus wasn't crucified according to the Muslim view of things, and therefore that Islam is not a continuation of Christianity. Cool? Good thing Muslims don't define themselves by Christian opinions, right? I don't think Muslims generally think that Islam is the fulfillment of Christianity because doesn't Islam say that Christianity is a sort of...distortion of Islam? So that's not the same relationship at all.

One argument Muslims could make against the Christian view is that in the very same way Christianity is not a continuation or fulfillment of Judaism.

Yeah, they sure could!

 All this argument would show (if it were true) is that both Islam and Christianity are false religions. 

Not necessarily? Maybe they don't have to be continuations of each other to have some sort of value????? MAYBE NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE DEFINED IN CHRISTIAN TERMS???

Noebel says that Muslims claim that Christian texts have been corrupted, but "Muslims have yet to provide justification for this claim, however, apart from circular appeals to the Qur'an and  Islamic traditions." THE FUCKING PROJECTION.

Onto Secular Humanism.

Because Secular Humanists deny the existence of the supernatural—including the mind, soul, and personality in any meaningful sense

No, they just deny the existence of the soul. Neither the mind nor the personality is supernatural, not inherently. 

Behaviorists believe all human thought and personality are merely by-products of physical interactions of the brain.

That's not what behaviorism means!!! Also no self-respecting psychologist is a hardcore behavorist in the year of our lord 2021!!!!

Secular Humanists who are consistent with their worldview must embrace behaviorism. If the supernatural does not exist, then psychology admits only the natural. Logically, then, Secular Humanists should be behaviorists.

Oh my god this is making me so fucking ANGRY. "There is no soul"=/="behaviorism"! This completely ignores the idea of emergent properties of systems!! I'm sorry I'm getting so unhinged, but this is a, like, 1950s view of psychology at the latest, and it's completely inaccurate to what secular psychology actually says is going on with the mind at all.

Most Secular Humanists call their psychology "third force" psychology because they are unwilling to embrace behaviorism or Freudianism, the other popular model. Unsatisfied with either branch of psychology, Secular Humanists create a third.

WHAT YEAR DO YOU THINK IT IS, NOEBEL?? Neither of those are hot theories in psychology anymore!

This portrayal of our condition is so incompatible with the Christian view that Secular Humanists feel compelled to attack the doctrine of original sin. Some go so far as to reinterpret the Bible to distort the concept of the Fall.

Note the language here -- distorting, attack, reinterpret.

According to Watters, the confusion and guilt heaped on Christians promotes mental illness: "A true Christian must always be in a state of torment, since he or she can never really be certain that God has forgiven him or her."

Watters' quote here exactly matches my experience, so I'll drink to that.

Blah blah Humanists believe that humans aren't sinful and sin is the result of social conditioning.

Just how much potential we are assumed to have is reflected by the title of one of Fromm's most important works, You Shall Be as Gods.

Heh. I named a fanfic after that once.

Blah blah Humanists are self-centered and believe in self-centeredness and that's what self-actualization means. Do psychologists even use the concept of self-actualization anymore? I've yet to see anything more recent than, like, the 60s at the latest in this chapter so far. I don't even really want to pick through what he's discussing, because it's all just very old, often debunked or expanded upon, psychological theory from before then. I have a hard time believing that anyone really adheres to these theories in these terms if they care at all about the science of psychology, and if they don't care about the science of psychology, they're not Noebel's definition of "humanists", so they're not the group he's describing.

Noebel says that secular humanist psychology is "neither scientific nor realistic" but he doesn't give a citation for that OR acknowledge that he's working with outdated theories OR acknowledge any newer theories. This is making me want to tear my hair out.

Rogers believes true science "will explore the private worlds of inner personal meanings, in an effort to discover lawful and orderly relationships there." [...] Without meaning to do so, the Humanistic definition of scientific studies such as those listed by Rogers allow not only Humanist psychology to be termed scientific, but also every major religion, including Christianity. Exploring "inner personal meanings" is a goal of every major religion.

That's funny because you're always talking about how Christianity is NOT about the self or inner personal meanings, it's about GOD and WHAT GOD WANTS. Pick an argument and stick with it.

Joyce Milton's The Road to Malpsychia: Humanistic Psychology and our Discontents recounts the practical failure of Secular Humanist psychology by showing how it played out in the lives of some of its major proponents and leading practitioners.

Who is Joyce Milton, you might ask? Mostly an author of childrens' nature books and biographies. What I'm saying is, she doesn't have a particular history in this field, these people, or any other relevant area.

Milton says of Donald Clark that he "was fully prepared to revolutionize education, break down children's sense of modesty about their own bodies, and celebrate 'deviance'."

Well, just that description sounds good to me.

In reviewing Milton's book for National Review, Paul C. Vitz, professor of psychology at New York University, concludes, "The reader needs to understand that the stories of these amoral and disordered lives are not just anecdotes: They are, rather, directly relevant to the theories of these psychologists."

Paul C. Vitz is an expert on the psychology of Christianity and he's currently at Divine Mercy University. He wrote a book positing that atheism comes from lacking a strong father figure. He was actually retired from NYU when this was published.

Onto Marxism, which Noebel again characterizes as behaviorist. Obviously he cites Pavlov and Skinner, continuing the tradition of not looking at any psychological theories less than 60 years old. There's a lot of descriptions of Pavlov and Skinner's work, as though they're still main leading lights anywhere but ABA therapists' office. There's also a lot about the conflict between materialism and free will. Again, it's hard for me to spork much of this because it's so obviously outdated and not what any contemporary Marxist theorist would be likely to believe now. It's basically completely incoherent. I'm not even going to bother to pick it apart, because every time I try to copy something down, I get so bogged down in "uhh, this isn't even an accurate representation" that I wind up having to restate the fact that Noebel is basing his characterization of Marxism on completely out of date ideas.

So, onto Cosmic Humanism. A lot of stuff about the fact that Cosmic Humanists believe in the idea of ultimate development and how getting in touch with your "God Within" can cure diseases and mental health problems. The way Noebel presents it is actually very similar to Christianity but with pantheism instead of monotheism -- this may be an unconscious reflection of Noebel's own prejudices, or it may be because most of the cosmic humanists he's quoting are from a culturally Christian background. He says that cosmic humanists meditate and do crystal stuff  and sometimes channel spirits (this should give you a good mental picture of who he's describing when he talks about cosmic humanism). The section is pretty brief -- just a couple of pages. Once again, Noebel betrays that cosmic humanism isn't really an actual thing and he's just bodged together a vague collection of people in order to try to make it be one.

And onto Postmoderism, fingers crossed. I think this is going to be bad, in that Noebel does not understand postmodernism and does not understand psychology, so his conception of postmodern psychology is sure to be terrible. Here's a summary of what he feels postmodern psychology is:

Yet, in recent years, our Postmodern condition has made the concept of a "soul" obsolete. Now, instead of being a soul, we are confronted with a multiplicity of "selves.""

I don't think those contradict. Anyway, this is basically all he is going to talk about for the entire section, at length.

Then he starts quoting about HOBBES and MACHIAVELLI. We are in the 14-1600s here. He quotes Rousseau and then blithely skips to postmodernism in the 21st century without connecting the dots at all. Dude.

Traditionally people sensed that both nature and culture are important for human development. But once the move was set in motion to negate nature and accent culture, Postmodernists jumped to banish nature altogether. This left only culture to shape the human psyche. For Foucault, each of us is "a being which is at least partially subjected to socially produced constraints and divisions."'" He sees "the modem-day notion of the self [as] bound up with, and inseparable from, the workings of social structures and institutions.""

Noebel: Postmodernists say that nature doesn't shape the human psyche, only culture. Look at Foucault saying that culture partially shapes the human psyche! 

Like, you're not actually reading that accurately, dude.

He then talks a lot about the idea of the "socially constructed self". He continues to quote theorists from the 40s-60s, like Lacan. Mainly what he means is, again, postmodernists thing we have not self but selves. (What I've learned from being partnered with a literary critic is that critics love saying things like "there are not [thing] but [thing]s" all the time.)

Louis Sass, a Rutgers clinical psychology professor, puts it this way, "There are clearly dangers in giving up that notion of a single self. You absolve the person of responsibility for making judgments." Imagine the excuses people might make: "Hey, it wasn't my fault. One of my other selves did it.""'*

That's not how that works.

Not only are there problems in the area of law, crime and punishment, but there are also major problems deciding exactly what is normal and abnormal.

Another central issue in fundamentalism that is like not even an issue in science. The lack of basis for prescriptivism makes them panic, but social science has to be largely descriptive if it wants to be useful. 

For example, Michel Foucault knowingly infected his homosexual partners with the AIDS virus.

Holy shit that's a low blow. Foucault died in '84, when AIDS was barely understood at all. He didn't even know that he had AIDS until a few months before he died. Foucault's partner, Daniel Defert, is still alive, and doesn't have AIDS. This is so, so cruel.

This should cause even the most devout Postmodernist to think twice before blurring the boundaries between sane and insane, normal and abnormal, and common sense and the ridiculous. If Postmodernists consider Foucault's behavior "normal," then there is no definition of abnormal worth considering.

Foucault's "behavior" was to be a gay man, have unprotected sex (which straight people did and do all the time and which fundamentalists encourage within marriage) with other men, catch a disease that nobody understood, and then die from it. This is what Noebel wants you to find so unbelievably deviant that calling it normal makes the idea of normality meaningless.

Noebel moves onto the summary and says:

Originally "psychology" meant the study of the psyche (soul). Now that we have entered into a post-Christian culture, maybe psychologists need to search for another name to describe their profession.

Meanings change over time. Fuck off.

That's the end of the chapter. He did actually talk more about mind-body dualism, monoism/naturalism, etc than I've really highlighted here, but that's because those were not the most disturbing parts of the chapter. Normally I try to end with an analysis of some quote that will sum up Noebel's project in some way. I feel too wrung-out to do that. This was a really rough chapter for me, and the homophobia at the end was just a twist of the knife. I'll just say that the ideas he's putting forward, and that are so common in this scene, are harmful. And I know they're harmful, because I'm still hurting from them. If testimonies of Christianity as a positive life-changing force are proof that the Bible is divinely-inspired, what does my testimony say?

We're halfway through now, though.