The Bible of Psychotherapy

Tom: You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.

We’re discussing Psychology and the Church, which has been the topic for a series of programs we’ve been doing on psychological counseling and how it’s made major in-roads within evangelical Christianity. And our discussion is based in part upon the content presented in the DVD we produced by the same title, Psychology and the Church: Critical Questions, Crucial Answers.

Now, Dave, we quoted a number of research psychiatrists and psychologists who scrutinized the methods and claims of the practitioners of psychotherapy and determine how effective they are. And we’ve learned…

Dave: And, Tom, they are among them. They’re checking themselves out, and they have become disillusioned.

Tom: Well, one of these research psychiatrists (I’m going to quote him), he says that the “techniques used by Western psychiatrists are, with few exceptions, on exactly the same plane as the techniques used by witch doctors.” Now that’s a quote from research psychologist E. Fuller Torrey, who is just being factual.

Now, I have here a very heavy book—for our listening audience this is probably a five-six pounder, okay? It’s a very large textbook—well, it’s not a textbook, but the title of the book is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It’s really the bible of psychotherapy.

Dave: That’s issue 4, or the fourth edition.

Tom: It’s the latest edition, edition 4. Now, Dave, this is a very thick…

Dave: It’s the latest edition, edition 4, and it’s also been revised a couple of times.

Tom: But it’s, as you can see, it’s a very thick, very impressive book for a field that a research psychiatrist just likened unto shamanism.

Dave: And they’re aiming at 2011, DSM 5.

Tom: So, how can you have a book like this that’s on, really, something that’s not scientific?

Dave: Tom, I was…the Lord sits me next to interesting people on airplanes, and I was sitting next to a (she wasn’t a psychiatrist) psychologist, and she had just come from the latest convention, and she was just mumbling in anger. “Because,” she says, “now I’ve got to buy another one!”

Tom: Another DSM.

Dave: Right, and she says, “This isn’t scientific. They vote on this!”

Tom: Well, let’s get into it a little bit, Dave. I’ve got some interesting information about the DSM.

Dave: But, Tom, can I go back before the DSM for a moment?

Tom: Sure, because I’m going to start in 1952. Are you going to go back earlier than that?

Dave: Oh, I’ll go back earlier than that. I don’t know whether everybody out there has heard this, I think I’ve mentioned it a time or two (or maybe put it in The Berean Call), but there was a very serious psychiatric disorder that was cured by the Civil War. It was called drapetomania, and it was rampant in those days. It affected only one class of people, slaves. And the symptoms—I’m being serious now—the symptoms of this psychiatric disorder, mental aberration, this mental disorder, were an overwhelming urge to escape the plantation! And what do you know, the Civil War cured that one!

Tom: Dave, we laugh, but this clinical psychologist that you sat next to, this is such a system that, you know—and I make no apologies for this—it’s almost fraudulent, really.

Dave: It is.

Tom: Well, let’s start with this…

Dave: Tom, I’m sorry to keep interrupting, but you’ve got the book and you’ve got all the facts over there. You remember 1974, the annual meeting there in San Francisco? Did we mentioned that at all?

Tom: We’ve mentioned it, but let’s use that as a punch line here.

Dave: Okay, okay, all right, okay.

Tom: Let’s start in 1952, okay? Because people aren’t going to believe it if we jump out with it. Well, let’s build up to it, that’s what I’m getting at.

Dave: All right, okay.

Tom: In 1952, the American Psychiatric Association, again, produced this book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, and more commonly called the DSM. The first edition listed 107 mental disorders. Remember, this is the manual of mental disorders.

Dave: Right, right.

Tom: That’s 1952.

Dave: That’s quite a few.

Tom: Right. The list…

Dave: Tom, I keep interrupting, but I remember, we used to go to the insane asylum. It was called Patton—I remember the name of it—and we would go there to give out tracts. And in those days you just had one diagnosis: you were crazy or you weren’t! But anyway…

Tom: Let me say this for our listeners. Look, we’re not trying to mock this, and certainly…

Dave: It’s hard not to, Tom.

Tom: I know it is, but at the same time, we know people go through issues of life, depression and so on and so forth.

Dave, maybe for some of our listeners, they don’t know, I’m particularly compassionate with regard to people who are diagnosed with mental illnesses, because my father was a psychiatrist. I grew up in the psychiatric community. I mean, I’ve lived with these people! So it’s not that we’re not empathetic here, but there’s something beyond this that just makes you angry almost. Well, I know it makes you angry!

Well, 1968, from 1952 to 1968, the mental disorders grew to 182; to 265 in 1980; to 292 in 1987, and today’s count based on this DSM 4, 374 mental disorders. Now, let’s pick a few here, okay?

Dave: Well, Tom, have we been getting crazier? Or did we have a lot of people who weren’t really that bad off running around and everybody thought they were normal, or is it that only these guys can decide who is normal and who isn’t?

Tom: Well, you know what we hear, we hear, “Well, wait a minute, Dave, life’s becoming more complex. I mean, back in 1952 things were kind of dull and boring, right?”

Dave: Tom, why don’t you explain why they have this, because you don’t get insurance coverage unless you’re in there.

Tom: I think they’re going to see that by some of the 374 items, the mental disorders they are placed in there.

Dave: Right. And expanding the number expands the influence of psychiatrists over society.

Tom: I think people are going to come to that conclusion, Dave. First of all we have—let’s start with oppositional defiant disorder.

Dave: That’s ODD—it’s very “odd.”

Tom: Well, let’s see here. It pertains to a child or adult who demonstrates—I’m quoting from the book—"hostile behavior toward authority figures.” The symptoms include losing one’s temper, arguing with adults, deliberately doing things that will annoy other people, and blaming others for his or her own mistakes or misbehavior. Whoa! I mean, come on, Dave, you had four kids, I’ve had five kids—any of them demonstrate any of these along the line?

Dave: Well, of course, some of them, sometimes.

Tom: Well, or in a work place, would you have any people like that?

Dave: It’s just actually pretty normal “abnormal” behavior that you see all the time, but we never called it a mental disorder. We just called it…actually what it is is the “flesh,” the Bible calls it—selfishness.

Tom: So what you are saying, Dave, is ODD would open the door (what you said earlier) to lots of people needing this kind of help.

Dave: Yeah, I don’t know if you have a quote there, but who was it that said, “You have the right to be a really obnoxious person on the job.” If you’re not that bad you don’t get any rights. But if you’re really outrageous, then your rights kick in and they have special privileges for you, and your employer has to make special provision.

Tom: Hmm. Dave, as you know, in past programs—I mean, we wrote about this in The Seduction of Christianity—and I’m talking about self-love, self-esteem. And we’ve underscored on these programs how the cornerstone of humanistic psychology, but pretty much all of the psychotherapies, is self.

Now, we’ve got a problem, Dave, because the DSM lists Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and that’s a mental dysfunction of those who (ironically!) nurture their self-esteem beyond the norm set by psychology.

Dave: Well, how does psychology have the right to set this norm? And of course, we’ve got a basic problem with self-esteem, which we’ve talked about in the past.

Tom: Well, in our DVD Psychology in the Church: Critical Questions, Crucial Answers, we have Dr. Martin and Deidre Bobgan, we have Dr. Tana Dineen, and I’ll just give you some insights from them from the DVD. Deidre talks about shyness. Shyness is in this book, the DSM.

Dave: Of course.

Tom: But they label it “social anxiety disorder.” Dr. Tana Dineen…

Dave: Tom, I’ll say they’re very good at coming up with names and labels.

Tom: I guess so. In 2004, Dave—this is from, again, our DVD Psychology in the Church: Crucial Questions, Critical Answers—Dr. Tana Dineen (clinical psychologist, but she’s left the occupation), she wrote a book called, Manufacturing Victims. Incredible book, and we’ll probably talk about it on our next program or two. Anyway, she says on the DVD, “In 2004 there was a Canada Statistic Survey. Canada did a survey of the entire Canadian population, and they determined that two million people are suffering debilitating shyness, which is now defined as a social anxiety disorder. And she goes on to say the big problem with this, according to the psychologists, is that maybe because of the shyness a person didn’t get the right job, maybe it affected their marriage. I mean, on and on, this has become—just shyness has become the root of major problems in their lives.

Dave: Well, of course it all leads to psychiatric help, Tom, for which they have to pay a fee. But they don’t really pay it; the insurance company will pay it, the government will back it up, and this is growth industry.

Tom: Based on this book, I’m a little concerned about you. You see, if a person has an antagonistic view of psychological counseling…

Dave: Right!

Tom: …refusing to subject himself to therapy, he’s classified in this book as suffering from “non-compliance with treatment disorder.”

Dave: Right.

Tom: And that’s Code V15.81. Now, let’s say you show up, and you’ve got this issue in your life and it’s not covered by this. Now we’ve got a problem, Dave.

Dave: Very deep problem, because I can’t pay for it!

Tom: You can’t pay for it.

Dave: I need some insurance help.

Tom: You need some insurance. Dave, you’re covered! There is “unspecified mental disorder,” which we can, you know, it has a number, and it can be sent in to your insurance.

Dave: Well, that’s good news!

Tom: Well, it’s good news/bad news, Dave. This is bad news—all of this is bad news.

Well, we’re subject to what? Psychology…you know, what’s normal in psychology is basically whatever the psychologist says; what’s abnormal is whatever the psychologist might say is abnormal; and if they can get it into a book like this, it’s covered.

Now, I’ve set you up for what you what you were about to say earlier. How do they decide, in this big, thick book, how do they decide from “anorexia nervosa” all the way to Z (I’m sure they’ve got one in there for Z)? How do they decide those things, Dave?

Dave: Well, they decide it by a vote, of course, and they decide it by how profitable it will be. But there are also circumstantial decisions that must be made, or decisions based on circumstances.

Tom, you remember in 1974 they had their annual convention in San Francisco. Of course, that’s kind of the headquarters for homosexuals, lesbians. They call themselves “gay”—they ruined a good word that we had back there. But for some time there had been pressure from the homosexual community to…well, the DSM had listed it as a mental disorder, and there was pressure to get it out of there. Tom, you’ve got the statistics in front of you—I don’t remember exactly, but they changed it. There was real pressure. And in fact, I remember a psychiatrist who was present told me that the homosexual community was going to get violent. Number one, they were going to cut off electricity to where the convention was being held.

Tom: Right there at the hotel.

Dave: Right, and under that pressure they had another vote. I’m sure you’ve got the statistics there—I think it was five-thousand-and-something to three-thousand-and-something. It wasn’t quite unanimous by a long shot, but they changed the classification from what to what, Tom?

Tom: Well, from a deviant abnormal behavior to a sexual preference.

Dave: Right, and then they took it out altogether.

Tom: Right. I don’t know how anybody by any stretch of the imagination could call that scientific, Dave. You know, again, we’re moving into the realm of fraud.

Dave: Tom, I get a little sarcastic. You know, what about this gravity thing they are talking about? Well, let’s get all the scientists together and let’s vote on it. You can’t make a science, as we’ve said, on human behavior, and they are trying to do that. They’re trying to be scientific, but this is not a science. And, Tom, the most grievous part is that—well, it’s grievous, number one, but almost the whole society follows this just like sheep, like lemmings.

Now, another thing that we have not mentioned, I think, about psychology is that this is really a great vehicle for Antichrist. This is an ecumenism like no other ecumenism. This is not just getting religions together (but it does!)—Catholics and Protestants speak the same psychological language. So do Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Buddhists and Hindus and Muslims. It’s amazing! This is the new universal language.

Tom: And, Dave, it’s a religion, there’s no doubt about it. It has a priesthood, and as you’re saying, the common language is acceptable to everyone. It’s based upon self. I mean, all these things contribute to what you’re saying.

Dave: I have often called psychology “Satan’s master stroke of genius.” He couldn’t have come up with anything better. And I know that’s angering some people out there—maybe they’ve already turned us off—but, Tom, we’re not making this up, we’re simply giving the facts.

Now, you’ve got this DSM and it keeps growing and growing and growing. If this was really—if ODD, oppositional defiant disorder, if that really was a serious mental aberration, mental disorder, if that really was the serious mental disorder that they now say it is, why does it take them so long to figure this out? Or is this just something new? “Wow, some germs are flying around and people keep getting more mental disorders.” Just from that standpoint, Tom, it’s ludicrous!

Tom: Mm-hmm. Dave, we began this program by talking about the inroads that this has made into the church. This is where it’s easy to get angry. Dave, I’m looking at an ad which was placed in the American Psychological Association Monitor. The ad was placed by Pat Robertson’s Regent University. The ad begins this way: first of all, you have a picture of the DSM with the Bible sitting on top of it. It says, “Read any good books lately? The DSM 4 and the Holy Bible belong together on the book shelves of any future psychologists who desires to treat the whole person—body, mind, and spirit.” That’s outrageous, Dave.

Dave: Now, Tom, apparently psychologists are the only ones who are competent to treat body, mind, and spirit.

Now, most…well, psychology started out with a denial of mind and spirit. Mind is nonphysical, spirit is nonphysical was the medical model of Freud. We were stimulus response mechanisms—B. F. Skinner’s behavioristic psychology. Now they’re into mind and spirit. What do they know about spirit? I’d like to ask these psychiatrists: “Did you get a degree in spirituality? What do you mean, you’re treating spirits?”

But, Tom, the picture shows the Bible on top of the DSM. Actually, it should be reversed, because the DSM has rewritten the Bible. This situation we have today, Christian psychology, so-called—by the way, we ought to talk about this in another program. Who brought it into the church? It was Norman Vincent Peale who on national radio said, “You don’t need to be born again. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine.”

And Phil Donahue, who was at that time interviewing him, said (he was shocked), “Well, you’re a minister. Aren’t you supposed to tell me that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life?”

Peale said, “Jesus Christ is one of the ways. There are many ways to God.” Now, this is a man who brought this whole thing into the church. He started with a psychiatric clinic. Smiley Blanton, who was a Freudian psychologist, and one of his claims to fame was…I forget the exact years that he had been psychoanalyzed by Freud himself four times, three successive years—I think ’37, ’38, and ’39. I don’t remember, but it’s around that time.

Now, Tom, doesn’t that give you great confidence! And the whole evangelical church withstood him for decades! They said, “This is not right. You can’t let psychology into the church.” And finally he prevailed. And we need to talk a little bit…

Tom: Well, we’ll bring it right up to today, Dave. The most influential man in the evangelical church without a doubt is Dr. James Dobson, psychologist Dr. James Dobson. So that’s where we are.