Solving Psychology's Problem
by Daniel McCreary
(c) 2007 by Daniel McCreary
Do you want to help solve psychology's problem?  There is a way that you can.  You can help by reading this report and by getting others to read it, especially those working and teaching in the areas of psychology (clinical, that is), psychiatry, or mental health.
Psychology's problem is twofold.  First, for quite a long while, it has pretended that it knew what it was doing and been in denial that it did not.  Second, it falls short of taking care of the human needs that it addresses, like putting a band-aid on a broken bone.
As a psychology major in college, I ran smack into the first part.  As I put it back then, "They don't know what they are talking about, and they don't want to admit it."
The cause of psychology's problem is manifold.  First, so very many working in the field, through pride, frustration with current theory, or feelings of having a new insight, keep developing brand new theories of psychology to guide their clinical work.  Second, I believe that many clinical patients and those that the clinical psychologists study are leading them around by the nose.  I do not mean they are being deliberately mislead; I mean they are buying into the warped point of view of those they study.  Third, it ignores the spiritual, especially the Bible (more on this later).
As a student of human beings for more than 40 years (since before I went to college), there are some findings I can finally report. Because this is a short report, you can email your questions to me at
[email protected].
Now to the solutions.
Many people who have "mental illness" do not have a  mental problem (their minds work just fine); they have a perceptual problem.
The people with this problem have a warped, distorted view of reality.  The reality they see through their distorted perception is like trying to see with your eyes how to walk to the store through cracked, distorted lenses.  This is the cause of most of the behavior we might call "crazy."  The actual mental problems are those where the actual reasoning process has become warped and distorted as well.  For example, a person who is shown the facts and who agrees with the facts that keeps reaching erroneous conclusions.  Like a person who tells you that any liquid will put out fires in spite of being shown what gasoline does to a fire and agreeing that gasoline is a liquid that does not put out fires.  Then he still says that any liquid will put out fires.  He has a mental problem, or has a viewpoint that tells him that his reasoning process is not to be trusted.  Also, with distorted perception, there are often (probably always) emotional and volitional complications.
The complications, of course, make it more difficult to help them get their perceptions straight.  Some people willfully hold onto a warped point of view.  For some people, admitting the truth can be much too painful; they are too attached to an illusion.  Others have mad decisions about things they believe are better than an undistorted point of view (value judgments, etc.).  There are some though, especially children with behavioral problems, who are looking for a reality they can actually trust.
There is also the problem that a normal perception of reality is only approximate.  Our perceptions are always partial, incomplete, and based on value judgments.  When considering perception, there is always the old factor of figure-ground relationships.  That is:  what is an object and what is background?  Is that a forest, or one aspen in a grove of trees?
Because of all this, it is not always a simple, easy thing to say, "This is an undistorted point of view."  Focus can change, all too rapidly.
Moving along, perceptual distortions are behind most all of schizophrenia.  Bipolar disorder is more tangled, and almost always, if not always, has complications.
Bipolar disorder is basically a problem, based on attitude complexes, that are based on underlying decisions.  Those decisions are built on distorted perceptions.  Those perceptions will almost always be attached to complications.  This disorder has a kind of two-valued logic (life is wonderful, I can do anything, or life is hopeless, I can do nothing).  This is a very distorted viewpoint.
The misperceptions come from:  (1)mental-emotional trauma, (2)being presented with misperceptions by others, or (3)a combination of both.  The presentation of misperceptions does not have to be intentional and often is not.  Sometimes the distortions come out of not having any explanations.  For example, children are excellent recorders, but very poor at interpretation.
Continuing on, this means that the method of dealing with these perceptual distortions will be to rub their noses in reality, so to speak.  Therapeutic techniques will, of course, be chosen according to individual needs.
This brings us to the question of what reality that we bring people to.  There has been much debate concerning the nature of reality, from those who believe that the physical world is all that there is, to those who believe that the physical world is complete illusion.  Leaving that debate for other occasions, we need also to consider how we want to be able to deal with whatever reality we bring them to.
There are also those who believe that you create your own reality (to them I say - with apologies to Frank Peretti - , "I am your fault.").  Therefore, the reality we bring them to should include:  (1)acknowledgement of the physical universe, whatever their interpretation of it might be, (2)other people and animal life and relationships with them, and (3)the idea of God.  These will effectively compose reality.  The idea of God must be included because it so permeates our world.  Even the atheist has an idea of the God he does not believe in.
Do not think this picture means that anything in it has to be believed in or accepted in a particular way; it means that these need to be acknowledged and related to.
To judge a person as being well from a psychosis, it is not necessary for that person to deal effectively with any part of life.  Working with the developmentally disabled as I do, they are neither psychotic nor neurotic, but they cannot deal effectively with things most of us take for granted, like using the toilet.
Basically, a person can be judged to be healthy (sane, if you like) when it can be reported that they have a clear, undistorted perception of reality, are basically free of complications, reason in a normal fashion, and are behaviorally normal.  This brings up the question of defining "clear," "undistorted," "perception," "reality," "normal," etc. but otherwise solves the first part of psychology's problem.
The most basic human motivators are hope, the need to do something, and pain.  (Pain here means anything that hurts or irritates, including unmet needs.)  Pain motivates us to avoid it, escape it, or overcome it.  Hope gives us a focus or a goal to work for.  The need to do something, while a sometimes sputtering motivation, is also very basic.  We are not made to just sit still; we sit still with a purpose, like resting.
Besides these three motivators, people have four reasons for doing anything:  because (1) I want to, (2) someone else wants me to, (3) it's the right thing to do, and (4) there is a need.
These three motivators and four reasons all work together, causing people to act, and modifying their actions.  Remember, these are not all the causes of human actions, just the most basic.  By keeping these three motivators, four reasons, the possible complications, and possible faulty reasoning in mind, the task of the therapist becomes definable.
The basic task of the therapist is to bring people into an undistorted perception of reality, clearing up any complications, and correcting any faulty reasoning.  He can do this, working with the three motivators, four reasons, and any other honest therapeutic tool he has.
A word here about hope.  Hope is such a powerful motivator that any therapist must be very careful when dealing with it.  Most people build their whole lives around hope of one kind or another.  A person who has no hope is either desperate or depressed, almost always.
Hope that is unrealistic can often be redirected into a related, but more realistic, channel.  Someone who cannot have a baby could be brought to consider adoption, for example.
Better than mere therapy would be, in the long run, to help people live right and be happy.  After all, why just bring them to a reality that will not really meet their needs and may leave them in a heap of misery?
This brings us to the second part of psychology's problem, that it has always fallen short of taking care of the human needs that it addresses.  As a Christian, I can tell you the rest of the story.  As a student of limited, humanistic psychology, I cannot.  Perhaps that is why Psychology Today, years ago, started carrying ads concerning spiritual things (such as astrology).
As it says above, by ignoring the spiritual side of human beings, psychology becomes very limited.  When your view of reality is as limited and incomplete as that of secular clinical psychology, you will never be able to treat the complete person.
On the other hand, there is nothing that says you cannot help a person to find the truth and to accept and embrace it.
To begin with, after a person's perception of reality is pretty well straightened out, you can help them to get an undistorted view of God, life, and eternity.  Of course, to do that, you must have an undistorted view yourself.  To get one, pick up a Bible, open it to the New Testament, and start reading.  Read it through, to the end of Revelation, then go back to the beginning and read it through from Genesis to Revelation.  Do not try to rush through the Bible; take your time.  Adsorb it.  Ask God for His help so you can understand it.  Remember, He wrote it.  You will find it to be very worth your while, even if you do not believe it.  It has a better view of life, God, and eternity than anything else, without exception or equivocation.  It will help you guide people into an undistorted view of these things, whether you understand all of it or not, and even whether you believe it or not.
Even if you are not willing to do that, as a therapist, you should make sure that people know that psychology does not have all of the answers, just like physics does not have all of the answers.  Make sure that you tell them when you have done all that you really can for them. I think that professional ethics would demand that you not keep treating a patient who is well.
On the other hand, there is plenty wrong with clinical psychology as it is now practiced, rather than going into all of that here, I wanted to offer solutions.
If you would like to know how to live right and be happy, you can go to my web site www.geocities.com/righthappy.  You can also send people there when you cannot do anything further for them.
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