Is Psychology A Science?

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.

Dave and I have been discussing issues related to the topic of Psychology and the Church in this first segment of our program, and it’s a subject that is not without some controversy among Christians. Now, some would say that it’s been a blessing from God to help His children with their mental, emotional, and behavioral problems of living, and others claim that it’s one of Satan’s most effective devices in destroying Christians’ confidence in the Word of God, especially it’s sufficiency. Dave, what do you think? Are both perspectives maybe a little extreme? Is there a more moderate reconciling position?

Dave: Well, Tom, as I often say, I just have a simple mind and I like to make things simple. Now, the Bible claims to be all we need, not for repairing an engine or flying an airplane, but to live our lives in a way that would please the Lord and would bear fruit for Him. To be happy and satisfied, fulfilled, rejoicing in the Lord. Now, if the Bible is lacking something, if faith in Christ is lacking, if Christ living His life in me, that’s not enough, but we need some help from Freud, or Jung, or Rogers, Maslow, you name them, then the Bible isn’t true. So, you said it has undermined Christian’s faith in the Scriptures, the sufficiency of Scriptures, and indeed it has. Second Peter 1, declares that “God has given us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.” Well, did He give us all things that pertain to life and godliness? Well, no, because the Holy Spirit, through ignorance or oversight, somehow left out some things that were really important. But fortunately, Freud discovered it, and Carl Jung, with the help of his demon, Philemon the demon, and…

Tom: Among others, spirits guides.

Dave: Yeah, he had all kinds…on one occasion he said his home there outside of Zurich was filled with demons who came from Jerusalem, and his major work, Septem Sermones ad Mortuos (The Seven Sermons to the Dead) was under their inspiration. Most of his, or many of his theories came from that, which the church follows today.

Okay, so either God has given us everything, or I guess we needed some more help. And wasn’t it good that Freud and these guys came along, who couldn’t get their own lives together, and so forth?

Tom: Dave, one of the reasons, as you know well, one of the reasons we’re addressing this subject, as controversial as it may be—and it’s only controversial because, as I have indicated, there are many in the church who believe this is what we need, and others who say, Absolutely not.  And what we are going to do in this series, the Lord willing, through the weeks ahead is talk about the issues, and speak specifically about the research, the documentations by research psychologists and psychiatrists. We’re going to bring the Scriptures to bear on much of what the church, those…many in the church who promote this sort of thing, we’re going to address that according to the Scriptures, and so on.

But, Dave, many would say, “Well, wait a minute, who are you guys? I mean, what gives you the right?” Dave, you don’t have a degree in psychology. I don’t have a degree, or actually a medical degree in psychiatry, so what would give us any credibility with regard to addressing this?

Dave: Well, Tom, when we get into the research, we’ll find out that they’ve actually proved that witch doctors do a better job than psychiatrists. They’ve actually proved that college professors with no background in psychology or psychiatry, they do at least a good, and often a better, job of advising people. What’s our problem? Well, it’s not something wrong with the brain. Now, if there’s something wrong with the brain, we’re not talking about that. We’re not neurosurgeons.

Tom: And neither are psychiatrists or psychologists, by the way.

Dave: Right. Well, some might be, but…

Tom: But if you’re a psychiatrist, basically—well, Dave, let’s get to the medium of psychotherapy, psychological counseling: it’s conversation, it’s talk.

Dave: Right, right. And what a person needs is someone who has some sympathy, concern, love, and some common sense, because mostly it’s common sense. What are the problems? Look, there are no big problems today that didn’t exist in the days of King David or Saul. Human beings have not changed. They’re still selfish, they’re still proud, they still are lustful. They need help in living, and these tendencies of human nature because of the fall, they are the root of all of the problems. It’s not some new thing that’s come along that all of the Bible didn’t foresee that, and therefore we need some new help. No, it’s exactly the same as it always has been.

Tom: Even though psychology, psychiatry, has given us labels that are intimidating by their very names: anorexia nervosa, bulimia…boy, I certainly wouldn’t want to address that issue! On the other hand, what exactly are those things, and how are they developed? How do people get into these kinds of situations that really destroy them?

Dave: And, Tom, a lot of the solution that modern medicine (and so that’s psychologists, psychiatrists), much of what they turn to is drugs. And I cannot avoid thinking or quoting Peter Breggin—we’ll probably quote him often in the days ahead. I mean, he’s a psychiatrist, one of the world’s leading authorities on psychotropic drugs, psychiatric drugs, and he says, “When you….” Well, a number of things. First of all, the human brain is the most complex organism, or instrument, or anything you can name, in the universe. There are more electronic switches and connections in the human brain, in one human brain, than there are in all of the electrical appliances in the entire world. There are, what—several hundred miles of nerves, and so forth. We do not even know what’s going on there for all our years of research, then when they throw a drug at that brain, that is very, very dangerous.

Secondly, we will have to come back and talk about this further, I presume. I’m the guest, Tom; you’re the guy that asks the questions—that would be later.

Tom: Well yeah, we do want to talk about those things, but that will not be, for our listeners out there, that’s not going to be the thrust of what we’re talking about, because you don’t have a medical degree, I don’t have a medical degree. And those issues that relate to our brains, an organism, that’s not the thrust of what we are talking about. We’re talking about psychological counseling, which deals basically with ideas, concepts, ideas that Freud had, Jung had, Maslow, people that you mentioned earlier. But we can address those things.

Dave: But we can quote the experts, Tom, and there is a relationship, you see. That’s what I was referring to.

Tom: Right, and we can also encourage people to do their homework, rather than just buying into something because that’s the latest idea, or the latest trend. They need to be thoughtful, they need to be discerning in this area.

Dave: Amen. So Peter Breggin goes on and he says, “To treat human concerns [problems of living, unhappiness, whatever it is] as though these are of some psychiatric origin, or as though they are mere chemical reactions, that is demeaning.” Not only demeaning, it destroys man as God made him.

So now, related to what we want to talk about, the counseling and the talking and so forth, that’s the next problem, because Freud had a medical model, and he just turned man into: we’re a stimulus response mechanism, each of us, and we mechanically respond. We have problems in our childhood and these are causing us to react the way we react.

So now we have really destroyed the soul, we’ve destroyed the conscience, we’ve destroyed the will. It’s not really my fault, you see, it’s some trauma that I have suffered, or whatever. So therefore, the psychological counseling, the psychotherapy is based on a wrong premise.

What we need is to get back in touch with God. We need to surrender our lives to Him. We need to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.” We need to really and truly believe what the Bible says: “It is no more I, but Christ living in me.”

Now, you know, one of the names of that one who would be born in Bethlehem, “Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given.” Isaiah:9:6For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
See All...: “The government will be upon His shoulders. His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor.” Now, if one of the names of Jesus is Counselor, shouldn’t we consult Him? Shouldn’t we go to Him in prayer?

I can’t avoid the words of a hymn:

If the world from you withhold

Of its riches and its gold,

And you have to get along with meager fare,

Just remember in His Word

How He feeds the little bird.

Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

Paul tells us that we’re to cast our concerns upon the Lord, that we’re to come to Him with prayer. We take everything to Him: “prayer, supplication with thanksgiving, we let our requests be made known unto God, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding shall keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Now, Tom, if that’s true, I don’t need psychological counseling. It would be nice to have a friend who understands my problem, who maybe he has some experience—an older couple for the younger couple who are having problems getting along with one another and understanding one another. But in the final analysis, it depends upon whether I’m willing to submit to the will of God and trust Him.

Tom: Yeah. But, Dave, what you’re talking about, it’s not very scientific. And psychotherapy, I mean, that’s science, isn’t it? Aren’t you just removing science from the equation of man’s makeup and the way he approaches life?

Dave: Yes, we are.

Tom: And we have a good reason to from the studies.

Dave: Right. Tom, I’ve probably said it a hundred times, but look—and of course, this touches on something that touches on Calvinism, touches on so much out there: does man have a free will or doesn’t he? Am I really in charge of what I think, or is this being imposed upon me by the neurons and the chemicals in my brain?

Now, if I am really in charge, then the way I think and the way I act, that’s my fault. That’s not someone else’s fault. Now I may have been misled, I may have been given false ideas that I am following, therefore I can be helped with the truth. And Jesus said, “You continue in my Word, you are my disciples indeed. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Okay? But to reduce man to some organism that we can predict—because look, you can’t talk about science. If it’s going to be scientific, it has to be repeatable. I’ve got to be able to repeat this experiment. It has to be falsifiable. I have to show some way that, no, it doesn’t always work, okay? You can’t rely on that. And I’ve got to be able to predict it and it’s got to be repeatable, and so forth. Now, look…

Tom: That’s the basis of science.

Dave: That’s right. Now, when the subject of your experiment is hopping about capriciously with a free will and you don’t know what the guy is going to do next, you do not have a science. And if you are going to turn human behavior into something that is scientifically predictable and controllable, you have destroyed man as God made him.

Tom: Now, Dave, you’re approaching this…you said at the beginning of the program that you’re just a simple-minded guy who wants to present this in simple fashion, and it can be. On the other hand, let’s turn to some of the research out there: Dr. Sigmund Koch.

Dave: Well, Tom, in my defense now, everything I’ve said is very simple, just common sense.

Tom: Of course, but some people say,” Oh, okay, well, that’s just your opinion,” and they need the credentials. They need some of the experts, and the experts have looked at this, Dave.

Dave: And I don’t know better credentials than the Holy Spirit who wrote the Bible.

Tom: Without a doubt, but some people aren’t convinced.

Dave: Right.

Tom: Well, if they need science to come to their defense, science is not going to do a very good job here. We have Dr. Sigmund Koch, who planned and directed the study, which was subsidized, by the way, by the National Science Foundation. It involved 80 eminent scholars assessing facts, theories, and methods of psychology. Okay, so they went over the whole thing. The results of this extensive endeavor were published in a seven-volume series…

Dave: It lasted 3 years.

Tom: …entitled, Psychology: A Study of Science. Well, what did Dr. Koch, what was his conclusion to all of this? I’m quoting him—he says: “I think, by this time, it should be utterly and finally clear that psychology cannot be a coherent science…” for many of the reasons that you just laid out simply!

Dave: Right.

Tom: There’s another side of it from a biblical perspective. Again, you look at human nature where body, mind, and spirit…even the New Agers would agree with that, right? Dave, we can have, up to a certain degree, a science of the body, physical science, chemistry, and so on. What kind of science can we have with regard to the spirit? What about the soul, the mind? Science of mind, science of spirit? What kind of instruments do we have to measure these kinds of things?

Dave: You know, Tom, it brings back memories. We used to get around once in a while to some of these New Age conferences, and that was when the New Age was really flourishing. Well, it’s still there, but it’s in different forms. And I remember holistic medicine, holistic health, and they had a triangle: mind, body, spirit.

And I used to suggest to people, “Your doctor, he’s into holistic medicine? Really? Tell me, what medicine do you give to the mind? Now, did he really, in medical school, study how to diagnose spirits? Well now, aren’t we getting into the realm of religion? Well, then why don’t you ask your doctor: ‘Doctor, what religion is this that you are offering in the name of science?’” That’s all that it possibly could be.

Okay, so you can’t…one of the top neurologists in the world, he was at the University of Toronto, this is what he said: “The brain is like a computer: programmed. It can only do what it is programmed to do.” Well, who is going to program it? He says the brain is like a computer programmed by something independent of itself. We call it the mind. The mind is not physical, the brain is physical. I love the way the Bobgans put it…

Tom: Doctor Martin and Deidre Bobgan have written extensively in this area. Terrific material.

Dave: Right, I recommend their books. They said, “There is a big difference between tissues and issues.” The tissues of the brain, or of the body, know nothing about issues. They don’t have morals, they don’t have understanding, and so forth. Now, we’re dealing with issues when we’re dealing with a person’s behavior. There are some big issues here. Are you going to continue to be selfish, self-centered?

We’re talking about a husband and wife now—they are having problems. Are you going to continue to insist on your own way? You’re going to continue to demand that you are right? You’re not going to be willing to admit you’ve been wrong? You’re not going to let love come into this? If you really love someone, you can go back in your mind—we can tell any married couple, Remember when you were courting, when you (it was called) “fell in love,” and each one of you would do anything for the other? Because that’s what love did for you, it changed you from just looking at yourselves. You can look back in your life when you first got acquainted, you fell in love, and you know what it was like. You would die for this woman or for this man. You would do anything. You would sacrifice. What happened? What changed that? Now, isn’t that what love is really supposed to be? How about this: if you got back to that attitude again, I don’t think you could have a quarrel. The problem is what the Bible says, what Christ says to the Ephesian church: “You’ve left your first love.” You don’t really love one another like you used to, but you promised to.

Look, you can’t talk to the tissues of the body or of the brain about that! These are issues, and that’s what we are dealing with. It’s the same, Tom, from the beginning until now, and we don’t need some new theories. In fact, Tom, I know you’ll get into this, but DSM, I mean, they keep changing it and adding to it, and so forth. It’s the same thing we’ve had forever. The issues haven’t changed. We don’t need any new theories.

Tom: Dave, the Lord willing, in the weeks ahead we’re going to continue to address this problem. And I would encourage those who are in churches who recognize that this is an issue that needs to be addressed in their churches, I would encourage them to listen to the programs as we talk about these different issues. You know, the church has been intimidated. We could go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s—we’re going to talk about the process of how the church was really weaned off the Word of God, intimidated by this process, believing it was scientific, believing that they didn’t have the ability, the credentials, the skills to minister as the church has done for, literally thousands of years.

Dave: Which has caused us to think, to imagine, we need “therapy.”

Tom: Well, it’s worse than that, Dave. Not just to think, but the church, the evangelical church, is at the top of the list when it comes to sending out their congregations, sending them out to secular psychologists, whether they’re called Christian psychologists or not, licensed psychologists, and that is a major, major problem.

Dave: Amen.