Psychiatrists and Psychologists on Social Justice
Psychiatrists and Psychologists on Social Justice
Theodore Dalrymple, M.D. (Psychiatry): “The corrosive ideal of social justice has been etched on to the psyche of the British so that it has become the good that is the sine qua non of all other goods. If society is unjust, anything goes. The assumption of personal responsibility can be postponed until social justice (always defined by its absence, for defining it positively is rather difficult) has been attained. In the meantime, one can behave abominably, yet feel aggrieved” ("Nasty, British and Short," The Spectator, September 21, 1991, available at http://www.skepticaldoctor.com/Quotes.html, accessed Sept 23, 2013).
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“One definition of decadence is the concentration on the gratifyingly imaginary to the disregard of the disconcertingly real. No one who knows Britain could doubt that it has very serious problems – economic, social and cultural. Its public services – which already consume a vast proportion of the national wealth – are not only inefficient but completely beyond amelioration by the expenditure of yet more money. Its population is abysmally educated, to the extent that in a few more years Britain will not even have a well-educated elite. An often cynical and criminally-minded population has been indoctrinated with shallow and gimcrack notions – for example, about social justice – that render it singularly unfit to compete in an increasingly competitive world. Not coincidentally, Britain has serious economic problems, the cracks of which the government managed to paper over for a considerable time, before they were cruelly exposed a few months ago. Unpleasant realities cannot be indefinitely disguised or conjured away: for reality is still reality, no matter how much spin is applied to it” (Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics & Culture of Decline, 2011, Kindle Locations 1987-1993).
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“Teachers rarely protect such children [the intelligent children living in ghettoes in Britain] or encourage them to resist absorption into the culture that will all too clearly imprison them in the social condition into which they were born: for teachers have themselves generally absorbed uncritically the notion that social justice – meaning little more than an equal distribution of income – is the summum bonum of human existence. I have heard two teachers expound the theory that, as social mobility reinforces the existing social structure, it delays the achievement of social justice by depriving the lower classes of militants and potential leaders. Thus to encourage an individual child to escape his heritage of continual soap opera and pop music, tabloid newspapers, poverty, squalor, and domestic violence is, in the eyes of many teachers, to encourage class treachery. It also conveniently absolves teachers of the tedious responsibility for the welfare of individual pupils” (“Lost in the Ghetto” in Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes The Underclass, 2001, p. 158).
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“‘Justice’ in the writings of many criminologists does not refer to the means by which an individual is either rewarded or punished for his conduct in life. It refers to social justice. Most criminologists cannot distinguish between unfairness and injustice, and they conclude that any society in which unfairness continues to exist (as it must) is therefore unjust. And the question of social justice usually boils down to the question of equality. As Jock Young puts it starkly: ‘Zero tolerance of crime must mean zero tolerance of inequality if it is to mean anything.’ Since one of the inhibitions against crime (as crime is commonly understood, by people who have suffered it or are likely to suffer it) is the perceived legitimacy of the legal system under which the potential criminal lives, those who propagate the idea that we live in a fundamentally unjust society also propagate crime. The poor reap what the intellectual sows” (Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics & Culture of Decline, Kindle Locations 2389-2396).
Steve Balt, M.D. (Psychiatry): “The bottom line is, here in America we’ve got thousands (perhaps millions?) of able-bodied people who, for one socioeconomic (i.e., not psychiatric) reason or another, can’t find work and have fallen upon psychiatric ‘disability’ as their savior. I’d love to help them, but, almost by definition, I cannot. And neither can any other doctor. Sure, they struggle and suffer, but their suffering is relieved by a steady job, financial support, and yes, direct government assistance. These are not part of the psychiatric armamentarium. It’s not medicine. Psychiatry should not be a tool for social justice. (We’ve tried that before. It failed.) Using psychiatric labels to help patients obtain taxpayers’ money, unless absolutely necessary and legitimate, is wasteful and dishonest. More importantly, it harms the very souls we have pledged an oath to protect. ("Psychiatry should not be a tool for social justice.” Retrieved May 16, 2012 http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/10/psychiatry-tool-social-justice.html).
Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. (Psychiatry): “The last 100 plus years or so have surely been the era of collectivism in all of its variations: socialism, communism and fascism in Europe and Asia, theocracies in the Middle East, and now 21st Century Liberalism in America. In the name of such eternally vague slogans as ‘social justice,’ ‘egalitarianism’ and ‘progressive causes,’ collectivist ideologies are continuing to seduce citizens and attack freedom on every continent. Even the 19th and early 20th Centuries’ progressive movement, which originally championed real liberties for individuals (especially women), has long since taken up the banner of collectivism despite the latter’s destructive effects. Why does collectivism still appeal? What is modern Liberalism’s sales pitch?
The answer is quiet straightforward. In its campaign rhetoric and policy platforms, modern liberalism is still selling what it has always sold: utopian promises for whiny adult children. As a member of this group, you have one important duty: empower liberal politicians by giving them your votes and your money. In return, they promise to provide whatever you want and eliminate whatever you don’t want. This is the ongoing promise of Liberal Land, the day care center of contemporary collectivism” (see http://www.libertymind.com/index.php?page_id=288, accessed Sept 17, 2013).
Sally Satel, M.D. (Psychiatry): “The pursuit of social justice is loosening the public health profession from its scientific and clinical moorings. Certainly, as citizens, public health active in any political sphere they like, but they must keep their politics from influencing their classroom, their interpretation of research and their health prescriptions. Professionals betray the public's trust when they use their status as health experts to continue the work they began as political activists in the 1960s” (P.C., M.D., 2000, pp. 41-42).
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“There is no reason, furthermore, why careful research on the relationship between social variables and health should not proceed and quality results be published for the enlightenment of professionals and the lay public alike. But the more passionately public health experts pursue social justice, the less effort, time and money they can devote to promoting health for Americans today. With more than half of all deaths resulting from diseases that are preventable or modifiable, it is indeed reckless to downplay the virtues of self-care. Worse, putting social justice at the core of the public health enterprise undermines individual accountability. People who practice unsafe sex, stick dirty needles in their veins or fail to take their TB medications daily are too often seen as passive victims of malign social forces. One is accused of ‘blaming the victim’ for expecting them to make safer choices, an expectation that takes on added urgency when third parties are endangered by their behavior” (P.C., M.D., 2000, p. 43).
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“Starr's observation exposes the hypocrisy of a movement that condemns the prevention of infections in infants as intolerable social control yet approves efforts to organize against capitalism and the meritocracy as pro-health. This paradox nicely captures the politicized culture of the new public health, a discipline whose practitioners consider themselves crusaders for social justice . . . That agenda is to bring about political change in the name of health. It is typically advanced in Marxist terms in which the world is a zero-sum game” (P.C, M.D., 2000, pp. 12-13).
Edwin Locke, Ph.D. (Psychology): “Capitalism has brought our country, and every other country that has tried it, a higher standard of living than any other system. Socialism has brought humanity nothing but stagnation, poverty and suffering in every country that has embraced it; witness Cuba, North Korea, Russia. That which the protesters call ‘corporate greed’ – which presumably means a free economy and the desire for profit – is the only means to satisfy human needs on a large scale.
The protesters will reply that capitalism denies ‘social justice’ because every person (and every country) does not make the same amount of money. They view the rich as immoral and regard the United States as the guiltiest country on Earth because it is so wealthy. What the protesters want is to drain the wealth of the producers and give it to those who are not productive.
They are right on one point: Capitalism is the antithesis of egalitarianism. Under capitalism, people get only what they earn; they do not have the right to seize what someone else has earned. What the socialists want is an unjust world, a world where they forcibly harness the able, the competent, the hard-working--the productive--to reward the nonproductive. What the protesters refuse to acknowledge is that capitalism is the system of genuine ‘social justice’” (“Protesters Are Enemies of Freedom,” L.A. Times, Aug. 10, 2000, http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug/10/local/me-2167, accessed Sept 22, 2013).
Michael Hurd, Ph.D. (Psychology): “‘Social justice’ is usually code for ‘self-sacrifice.’ You would be encouraged by such a therapist to sacrifice, wherever possible, for the sake of ‘the social good’ as against the good of the individual; specifically ‘the social good’ as the left defines it. Such a therapist, by ideological definition, would encourage sacrifice of the self to a particular racial/gender group collective — the very essence of what undermines self-esteem!
Sadly, such a therapist would not meet with opposition or controversy from colleagues in her field. She would find plenty of seminars and courses on the subject of ‘social justice,’ feminism and multiculturalism at her professional conferences – all from the explicitly leftist point of view.
Any other viewpoint — ‘right wing’ or simply anything not leftist — would be ignored or absent. If, in a rare case, such a viewpoint were to come up in the context of psychotherapy, there would be horrendous opposition. When a therapist comes from an ideologically leftist point of view, it’s considered proper and even admirable. Anything different is considered unprofessional and inappropriate for therapy (at best)” (“Is Therapy Worth the Effort? (Part 2 of 2),” http://www.drhurd.com/index.php/Daily-Dose-of-Reason/Psychology-Self-Improvement/Is-Therapy-Worth-the-Effort-Part-2-of-2.html, accessed Sept 13, 2013).
Rob Hunsaker (Psychology): “After reading a great deal of social justice material, I’m forced to conclude that its authors have a problem being straightforward. They constantly fail to state the implications of implementing a social justice agenda, opting instead for half-admissions. For example, it is rather inane to say that social justice is ‘highly political’, when, in fact, it is entirely political. What else does one call activism on behalf of minority issues at the group level?” (“Social Justice: An Inconvenient Irony,” Counseling Today OpEd, April 2008, available at http://sjirony.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html ).
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“Similarly, the bare statement that social justice is ‘controversial’ is essentially meaningless. It does, however, make sense from a strategic point of view, because if activists had to admit exactly how the movement is controversial, it would be like shooting themselves in the foot. They would have to admit that social justice can only be practiced by those on the political far-left. Consider, for example, how incongruent it would be for republican, objectivist, pastoral, independent, and perhaps even moderate democrat counselors to advocate for gay marriage, or a variety of other group-level minority issues” (“Social Justice: An Inconvenient Irony,” Counseling Today OpEd, April 2008, available at http://sjirony.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html ).
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“Why don’t social justice activists, who are by-and-large academics, present the explicit political nature of social justice? I suggest that it’s because of the movement’s most inconvenient irony: while claiming to fight against oppression, social justice actually perpetrates its own form of oppression by seeking to impose a far-left political agenda on all mental health professionals. Social justice’s most ironic turn, then, is that it seeks to erase difference, impose its values, and proclaim only one standard of ethics” (“Social justice: An Inconvenient Irony,” Counseling Today OpEd, April 2008, available at http://sjirony.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html).
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“Though never made explicit by its authors, the political basis of social justice is apparent after reading only a few activist tracts. Social justice rests on a distributive justice model, or, in more common language, socialism/Marxism” (“Social justice: An Inconvenient Irony,” Counseling Today OpEd, April 2008, available at http://sjirony.blogspot.com/2008/09/social-justice-inconvenient-irony.html).
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[Regarding the social justice agenda in counseling psychology] “From a social justice perspective, a client’s distress or functional impairment is not so much rooted in cognitive, affective, behavioral, or relational factors, but in a long list of impinging social/environmental ills, including poverty, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Social justice activists are therefore critical of primary service delivery to individuals by claiming that this traditional emphasis renders the counseling professions socially and politically neutral” (“Counseling and Social Justice,” Academic Questions Aug. 19, 2011, p. 327).
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“The major criticism of the social justice agenda – of activism on behalf of entire minority groups, or what Roderick J. Watts call ‘population-specific psychologies,’ – should be obvious: It is most often associated with the political left. . . . It would be contradictory for many (perhaps most) practitioners who identify as political or religious conservatives or even moderates to engage in activism based on identity politics. To make matters worse, social justice activists rarely – if ever – acknowledge the ways in which their agenda is incompatible with other political positions” (“Counseling and Social Justice,” Academic Questions, Aug. 19, 2011, p. 327).
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“Although Fox clearly identifies with the left-wing perspectives that anchor social justice work, he is yet another activist failing to acknowledge that social justice efforts cannot possibly accommodate the views of counseling professionals whose affiliations span the political spectrum. . . . Whatever the reason, advocates who fail to disclose the precise political nature of the social justice agenda ignore scholarly norms and impede full engagement with critics” (“Counseling and Social Justice,” Academic Questions, Aug. 19, 2011, p. 327).
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“Lastly, the social justice agenda should be analyzed from the perspective of propaganda, beginning with identification of the term ‘social justice’ itself as a euphemism for left-wing political activism” (“Counseling and Social Justice,” Academic Questions, Aug. 19, 2011, p. 337).
Jason Lillis, Ph.D. (Psychology), William T. O'Donohue, Ph.D. (Psychology) Michael Cucciare, M.A. (Psychology), Elizabeth Lillis, B.A. (Psychology): “The mainstream political left, amply represented in psychology, has influenced the definition of social justice in community psychology; however, political philosophers have explicated social justice in vastly different ways, rendering it multivocal. Critical analysis in community psychology has been absent with respect to defining social justice problems and methods of change, which has led to a dominant bias associated with a liberal worldview” ("Social Justice in Community Psychology," in Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well Intentioned Path to Harm, 2005, (pp. 273-274).
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“Moreover, social justice has taken on a powerful rhetorical function, implying the “goodness” of the motives and actions of the community psychologist. However, passive acceptance of the construct of social justice serves to limit critical evaluation of the goals and interventions of community psychology and ignore other, more conservative approaches to defining and achieving social justice. Specifically, the liberal world-view of community psychology has resulted in a complete lack of conservative ideas in the literature, depriving the field of potentially useful alternative conceptualizations of social justice problems, goals, methods of change, and interventions” (“Social Justice in Community Psychology,” in Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well Intentioned Path to Harm, 2005, Kindle Locations 6472-6476).
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“Ironically, community psychology advocates another important value— respect for diversity— yet does not practice this when it comes to sociopolitical ideas. . . Indeed, community psychology does not show any significant diversity of opinion in terms of defining social justice problems, goals, methods of change, and interventions” (“Social Justice in Community Psychology” in Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well Intentioned Path to Harm, 2005, Kindle Locations 6477-6478).
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“In community psychology, the influence of the political left (based on Rawls's theories) has led to a narrow definition of social justice problems and interventions characterized by the following:
- There are disadvantaged people who need help. These politically sanctioned minority groups include African-Americans, Hispanics, women, and homosexuals.
- These minority groups have and continue to experience disadvantages— for example, poverty, prejudice, exposure to violence, mental and physical health problems— that are the result of oppression.
- The disadvantaged are in need of assistance from the intellectual elite, who will design interventions to combat oppression” (“Social Justice in Community Psychology,” Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well Intentioned Path to Harm, 2005, (Kindle Locations 6522-6523).
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“The many problems with Rawls's analysis hold true for community psychology, which focuses on problematic mechanisms of change: eradicating alleged oppression through community and government action. This liberal social justice promotes the adverse consequences we have described and serves to perpetuate current circumstances in disadvantaged groups. More important, there is no efficacy data to support this approach. For example, there are no data showing that the socioeconomic status of minorities rises after a community psychology intervention or that prejudice causes socioeconomic discrepancies that advocacy changes. Community psychology simply has not hit any homeruns in this area that would warrant the de facto dismissal of alternative views” (“Social Justice in Community Psychology,” Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well Intentioned Path to Harm, 2005, Kindle Locations 6603-6609).
Shannon D. Smith, Ph. D. (Psychology), Cynthia A. Reynolds, Ph. D., (Psychology), and Amanda Rovnak, Ph.D. (Psychology): “The emerging discourse of the social advocacy movement is ‘social justice,’ ‘social action,’ and ‘advocacy.’ Although these two very different discourses may merge to foster the well-being of counseling clients, they represent two distinct epistemologies and distinctive ways of knowing and understanding—development/mental health versus social justice. There are two very different implied agendas in each of these concepts (e.g., health vs. justice).
As such, there is an implied movement away from the individual and family to a focus on society. Clinical agenda items then shift from issues that affect the mental and emotional health of clients toward matters that constitute social illnesses, thus the need for social change. Therefore, the introduction of this new language (i.e., social advocacy, social action) represents a paradigm shift for many counselors and educators in terms of client conceptualization and the very notion of what constitutes mental illness and human development; this is a shift that not all members of the counseling profession are comfortable with or willing to embrace so quickly” (“A Critical Analysis of the Social Advocacy Movement in Counseling,” Journal of Counseling & Development, Fall 2009, vol. 87 p. 485).
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“The prospect of personal hidden agendas (e.g., personal goals, retribution, stonewalling) to be acted out in the name of social justice is an abuse and potential pitfall of the social advocacy movement. For example, a school counselor who appears to assist an individual via an act of social advocacy counseling may actually produce harm to other students, faculty, or staff with whom the school counselor has had past disagreements” (“A Critical Analysis of the Social Advocacy Movement in Counseling,” Journal of Counseling & Development, Fall 2009, vol. 87 p. 487).
Lisa A. Goodman, Ph.D. (Psychology), Belle Liang, Ph.D. (Psychology), Janet E. Helms, Ph.D. (Psychology); Elizabeth Sparks, Ph.D. (Psychology): “Given this definition, we conceptualize the social justice work of counseling psychologists as scholarship and professional action designed to change societal values, structures, policies, and practices, such that disadvantaged or marginalized groups gain increased access to these tools of self-determination” (“Training Counseling Psychologists,” The Counseling Psychologist, Nov. 6, 2004, pp794, 95, available at http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/py844/good/py84433.pdf). ___________________
“Thus, the target of intervention in social justice work is the social context in addition to or instead of the individual. Of course, the social context is not some abstract set of disembodied structures. Individuals comprise a social context and shape policies, cultural practices, and social norms. The point here is that social justice–oriented psychologists locate the source of individual suffering in these social conditions and then work to change them” (“Training Counseling Psychologists,” The Counseling Psychologist, Nov. 6, 2004, pp797, available at http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/py844/good/py84433.pdf).
Charles Krauthammer (Psychiatry): "Yes, [President Obama] talked about how we got here. He gave a nice historical rundown except that he left out a critical three years – his presidency. It is as if it did not exist. It’s as if we jumped from ‘08 to today. This speech was intended to say that everything that happened the past three years has nothing to do with my administration or policies – economic stagnation, debt, high unemployment. It is the result of the malice of the rich. He talked about that at length. This is a classic example of how little it takes to stir the erogenous zones of liberals. You give them a speech with social justice, a little bit of class war. You wrap it up in the patina of intellectualism. Essentially, it is a speech that exonerates anything he has done and obviously not done and says all of our problems today are the result of the plutocrats. That is why he is more like Hugo Chávez than he is Teddy Roosevelt in this speech" (Segment from TV show Washington Journal, Dec. 2011, http://www.theblaze.com/stories/charles-krauthammer-on-obama-more-a-hugo-chavez-than-he-is-a-teddy-roosevelt/, accessed Dec. 11, 2011).
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“[Obama] is a man that is so ideological. He is so committed, since the days as a community organizer, to undoing the injustices he sees in the country — what he calls social justice. He sees Europe [and] Scandinavia as a far more good and just society than ours. They have very high taxes and very strong sort of blanket entitlements, cradle to grave. That’s the ideal to which he wants to move the United States” (Interview with Bill O’Reilly reported on The Daily Caller, http://dailycaller.com/2013/01/03/krauthammer-house-of-representatives-has-been-neutered-by-obama-video/#ixzz2iQ9gB7iz, accessed Oct 21, 2013).
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