Thoughts on Our Materialist (Pseudo) Science of Psychology
and how it is wrecking our mental health
(If you have received this by email, please click on the title, which will send you to the latest version of the article on Substack. I often continue to edit and correct typos after publishing the article).
“... when we provide a psychological climate that permits persons to be ... We are tapping into a tendency which permeates all of organic life—a tendency to become all the complexity of which the organism is capable. And on an even larger scale ... we are tuning in to a potent creative tendency which has formed our universe ... perhaps we are touching the cutting edge of our ability to transcend ourselves, to create new and more spiritual directions in human evolution..” — Carl Rogers (1980). A Way of Being.
My clients know how I think about mental health, and psychotherapy1. They know precisely what we are doing in therapy, and what they are there to achieve. My work is grounded in good science, and my clients are always in charge of all aspects of their therapy process. I keep no knowledge to myself. Everyone deserves to know what I know (and far beyond), especially when it concerns their wellbeing.
Therapy done properly, is respectful, and to be respectful, it has to take into account the whole person. It should not see clients, human beings, as ‘broken objects with problems’, nor therapy as a process that somehow ‘fixes’ them. Clients should not be reduced or fragmented into ‘symptoms’. Good therapy has to be humble enough to recognise the obvious, which is that we do not, in fact, know what, or why we are.
No therapist (or human being), no matter how educated, talented, insightful, or skilled, can truly understand their clients (or other human beings, for that matter). We are complex systems, and we exist within, and as parts of other complex systems, that for now we are unable to grasp, and perhaps never will. When it comes to complex systems, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. It means that you cannot hope to understand the whole by breaking it down to the components from which it emerges. Either way, our current science is not even close to identifying all the ‘parts’ that make us what we are, let alone how those parts interact, or the whole that they give rise to.
My understanding of psychotherapy and mental health is grounded in humanistic, and existential psychologies. The humanistic and existential schools in psychology are well-established. They had a profound, albeit fleeting, and severely diminishing, impact on how psychotherapy is taught and practised.
The humanists argued that we cannot be well psychologically, unless we are enabled to grow towards our potential. The existentialists added that our mental health will also suffer if our need for purpose is not fulfilled2. Humanistic therapy is focused on potential, and existential therapy, on meaning or purpose. All humanistic therapies are also existential, and vice versa.
The need to develop towards our potential, and our need for purpose are both innate to us, and they are interconnected. When I say ‘innate’ I mean ‘non-negotiable’. These two non-physical needs are just as innate to us as our most basic physiological needs. When they are not met, we suffer.
How can any creature be well when it is not allowed to become what it is supposed to become, or in other words, to be fully what it is? If people are only allowed to exist physically, they will be desperately unwell. At best, they will live with chronic anxiety. At worst, they will develop severe mental health conditions, and might even feel suicidal. Many people resort to substances, alcohol, or other addictions (compensatory behaviours), just to cope with this. Of course, the compensatory behaviours themselves become a problem. Not only do many of them harm the body, they also distract people away from what they really need, which is to grow, and to have a meaningful life.
I do not blame people for relying on compensatory behaviours. Living a stagnant life that feels pointless, and not seeing any alternative is so painful, that people would rather not face it. All compensatory behaviours are intended to numb, or silence our self-awareness, that inner voice that tells us that something is wrong with the way we live. Compensatory behaviours are not limited to individuals. Western society on the whole is deeply steeped in avoidance and escapism, a symptom of our collective failure to invest in fulfilment and meaning.
The relationship between our physiological needs, and our non-physical needs for growth and purpose is interesting in itself. We obviously need to be alive, and reasonably well physically in order to have a chance to grow, and live a fulfilling life. Dead people do not grow, and do not fulfil their human potential, at least not in our reality as we know it. We also know, and have plenty of evidence, that when we are not well psychologically, when our mind and spirit suffer, our physical health suffers in profound, complex, acute and chronic ways3. This points to another important fact about us. The psychological, and physical aspects of ourselves are not separate domains. We cannot expect to understand ourselves, or solve our problems if we treat them as if they are separate. This is simply out of touch with reality.
Survival is just a numbers game. We consider a species endangered when its numbers drop. When there are many individuals in a species, we consider it not endangered. A species is extinct when the number of individuals goes down to zero. At eight billion and growing, we are clearly winning the survival game. But since we are not enabling everyone to live fully, or with purpose, we are not doing well psychologically. In other words, we suffer.
By extension, everything we touch suffers too. Even with the best of intentions, unhappy, anxious parents, cannot raise happy, non-anxious humans. Not every client I see who suffers from anxiety was mistreated in childhood. Many just grew up with parents who were unfulfilled, and therefore anxious. Unhappy, survivalist humans, who use so much of their energy inventing more ways to avoid their unmet need to become fully human, do not have much left to care about their environment. All they can do is replicate their unhappiness, and repeat familiar, and often horrible patterns. (I don’t think I need to provide evidence of this. But if you are not convinced, watch the news this evening, or read a history book…)
Not surprisingly, the humanists and the existentialists were openly critical of human society. They commented on politics, economics, society, and international relations. Their main complaint has been that we are failing to make the fulfilment of our human potential, and our need for purpose the centre of our collective existence.
“All the evidence that we have … indicates that … in practically every human being and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, and impulse toward growth, or toward the actualization of human potentialities. But at once we are confronted with the very saddening realization that so few people make it. Only a small proportion of the human population gets to the point of identity, of selfhood, full humanness, self-actualization, etc., even in a society like ours which is relatively one of the most fortunate on the face of the earth. This our great paradox. We have the impulse towards full development of humanness. Then why is it that it doesn’t happen more often? What blocks it?”
— A. Maslow (1971) The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. (pp. 24-25)
The Pseudo-Science of Psychology
Seeing human beings as whole and complex systems with a need for fulfilment and for meaning is not the norm in the West. The dominant psychology that informs most medical, psychiatric, and psychological services is in fact a pseudo-science, not science as it can, or should be. By pseudo-science I mean dogma masquerading as science. The dogma is the materialist paradigm that dominates all of our current thinking about pretty much everything.
Materialist science (’scientism’) is dogmatic, because without any evidence at all, it holds on to the belief that only matter is real4. Another way of putting it is that according to materialist science, anything that is not matter is not real, and therefore cannot be taken seriously.
“Materialism is pure metaphysics; there is no way to verify objectively that everything, including mind and consciousness, arises from matter” — Goswami, A. Physics of the Soul.
Without any scientific evidence, materialists believe that our mind and our spirit, our non-physical need for growth and meaning are in fact a fictional, bizarre, possibly unfortunate, maybe unintended, by-product of the complexity of our physical brain. In other words, whatever it is we feel innately that we are, is nothing more than a figment of our imagination… Even our capacity for imagination is a strange by-product of our physical brain, and is therefore also an illusion... According to this belief, the human being is a body, a bio-chemical machine, and when the body dies, the human dies.
Our dogmatic pseudo-science assumes that it is only a matter of time before scientists will discover how the physical brain generates what we think of as our spirit, our mind, or consciousness. But while mainstream materialist science waits to find this elusive proof, it does not investigate the spirit, or the relationship between the mind and the body, nor does it invest in studying our need for fulfilment or purpose, and how it relates to our mental and physical health.
True scientific research is supposed to be open-minded, open-ended, and should be prepared to go where the evidence leads. Good science does not restrict the scope of its investigation before it even started, let alone rely on nothing more than a ‘belief’… This is how dogma works5.
When the Church was in charge in Europe, it knew ‘as a fact’ everything there was to know about everything, and no one could question it. Questioning and dissent were harshly punished. People were hung, or burnt at the stake for ‘heresy’, which simply meant disagreeing with, or questioning the Church's dogma.
When Galileo looked through his telescope, and saw irrefutable evidence that the Church was wrong, he invited Church scholars to look through his telescope. As a true scientist, he hoped that if they could see what he saw, they would be prepared to reconsider their theories. But they refused. They would not look through Galileo’s telescope, for fear that what they might see, could usettle their belief that the Earth was at the centre of everything, and that everything revolved around it. To make the threat Galileo presented go away, the Church tried him, and condemned him to house arrest for the rest of his life.
In our places of knowledge in the West, we do not burn people at the stake, nor do we arrest them for questioning the materialistic dogma. We just label them, shame, and marginalise them, quietly sideline them, deprive them of tenure, and promotions, and of research funding. This is effective enough, and ensures that everyone who wants to be a part of the scientific mainstream, toes the line. Dissenters are allowed to speak privately about their doubts, but if they want to continue to earn a living, they have to play by the rules, and believe, or pretend to believe that only matter is real.
Modern science was supposed to replace Church dogma and its politics with open, free inquiry. But instead, it replaced it with another dogma, complete with the kind of politics that is necessary to protect it. Our dominant dogmatic science has decided in advance what the truth is (that only matter is real), and it adjusts everything it does to fit within this unproven belief. It refuses to look through the metaphorical telescope, because it might show that our mind and spirit are in fact real, and are independent of the physical brain6.
Materialist Science Is Harmful to Our Mental Health
As a psychotherapist I argue that our collective psychology pays a heavy price for this. By ignoring the mind, and the spirit (against all the evidence we have) we are not only ignoring our suffering, we are making ourselves unwell. We are denying what we are, and what is really important to us, all in the name of an unproven belief.
Our Western psychology is based on materialist science, and is therefore betraying its own purpose. The word ‘psychology’ means the study of the psyche (Greek for mind). If the psyche, the mind, is only an illusion created by the physical brain, then what is psychology doing? Is an entire discipline focused on an illusion?
Western psychology, the science that informs mental health services in the West is so flawed, it is most likely one of the major causes of the mental health crisis we are experiencing. In other words, I believe it is not only unhelpful, it causes the very problems it is supposed to help solve.
I am a qualified and registered ‘mental health professional’, but I don’t like the phrase ‘mental health’. If you think about it, what we think of as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ mental health is in fact the absence, or presence of suffering. Western psychology means well, because it is interested in reducing human suffering. But because it is rooted in materialist science, it has reduced human suffering to a ‘clinical’ problem, something it can fit into its materialist/reductionist framework.
It gets worse. As soon as we talk about growth and purpose, we begin to touch on something that our materialist psychology is deeply uncomfortable with, our spirit. If our spirit is not real, then our profound (non physical) needs for fulfilment and purpose are also not real. If our psychological difficulties are a symptom of a non-existent suffering spirit, and if the spirit and mind are just an illusion, what does it say about our psychological problems? I think it says we are imagining them… In other words, an inevitable conclusion from materialist psychology is that psychotherapy deals with an illusion. It is no wonder that so many people come to therapy thinking they are just imagining their difficulties. (You need to see how people’s bodies relax the moment I make it clear in the first session that I take their suffering very seriously indeed).
It is not surprising that a materialist psychology champions quasi-medical solutions to mental health problems, and focuses on nonsensical symptom management techniques, and on ‘coping’. Coping is really just another word for ‘surviving’, and not living fully. The prevalent approaches to psychological suffering are positively soul-destroying. They tell people they ‘should’ be ‘happy’, or ‘OK’ regardless of whether or not they feel they are growing, or that their life has any meaning. Because these scientifically incorrect, dehumanising, and irrelevant approaches do not work, they leave people feeling even more hopeless than they were before they reached out for help. And they do not work, because they cannot work. Any approach that focuses on symptoms in isolation from the context of the whole person and their reality, is doomed to fail. To be well, we need to feel whole. To feel whole, we need to be seen as whole by others.
Unhappiness, psychological suffering, is considered a ‘sickness’. To engage with human suffering Western psychology must medicalise it. It is the only way it can perceive it as ‘real’ within its own self-contradictory, materialist framework. Psychology rejects the ample evidence we already have, and what we all know we need, to live fully and without suffering. The humanists and existentialists knew what they were talking about, but because they were not materialists, they are now largely ignored.
Humanistic and existential views are well-supported within Dr Dan Siegel’s revolutionary framework of Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB). IPNB is a tentative, humble, and inclusive framework. It is properly scientific, in the purest sense of what science is supposed to be: humble, exploratory, open, and inclusive (the opposite of dogma). IPNB is not ego, or fear-driven. It is curious about, and welcomes all ways of knowing. All human experience, how we express it, study it, or think about it (e.g. art in all its forms, philosophy, science, spiritual traditions and religions, etc.) are welcome in IPNB. All ways of knowing are worth learning from, because they each highlight something about the complex system that we are, and the complexity of the system we call reality. IPNB does not make any claims that it understands, or grasps what we are, or that it has the last word on it. As proper scientific approach, it is committed to learning and following the evidence.
Western science has its uses and successes, and I rely on scientific knowledge in my work. But materialist science has no right to claim supremacy over all other ways of knowing. I have applied IPNB in my work for the past twenty years, and have the privilege of seeing people grow towards their potential, and develop a purposeful life. To change ourselves in therapy we need to change our brain’s connectivity, but it does not mean that I think we are our physical brain. I don’t know what we are and I might never know (although I have tentative thoughts about it), but I am not afraid not to know. The framework of IPNB honours my clients and me, and our shared humanity, whatever that is.
Our New Dark Ages
I truly think that we are living through a second ‘dark age’, if what we mean by a ‘dark age’ is the dominance of one dogma. Our technology does not make us advanced. Real progress is about openness to truth, and to exploration. We cannot think of ourselves as advanced as long as we are holding on to an unproven belief, and as long as we cause so much suffering in its name. We are not really progressive if we close our collective mind to everything that is really meaningful to us.
All revolutions (good or bad), are driven by a way of thinking that is different to some status quo. I believe that if we want to be well, we must ditch the materialist paradigm in all our sciences, and embrace the truth about ourselves. We cannot continue to pretend we are something we are not, and disregard what is important to us. We do not really know what we are, but we do know that we need to grow, and we need to feel that our life means something. We also know that these needs are real. If we do not open our mind to reality, we will continue to suffer, and possibly lead to our own extinction.
Footnote: if you are interested, I explain it all in my short book, Therapy Without A Therapist (available on Amazon worldwide on Kindle and in paperback).
On this planet the need for purpose seems to be limited to human beings. We do not currently know if other living beings we share the planet with have the same yearning for life to mean something beyond pure existence, or the continuation of their species. We do, however, share our innate need to become everything we can become with everything else in nature.
See my short article on this topic for Paradigm Explorer, the publication of Scientific & Medical Network (SMN), or the talk I gave for the Galileo Commission, a project of the SMN.
If you are interested in reading more about this, I strongly recommend the excellent Galileo Commission Report.
I find it sometimes laughable and sometimes disturbing, that mainstream science always takes placebo into account in randomised control trials in psychology, or in medicine. But no one is studying placebo in mainstream science. How can science acknowledge that the mind can heal the body (that’s what placebo is), but at the same time pretend that the whole thing is science fiction or fantasy? Is it real, or is it not?
"It is not surprising that a materialist psychology champions quasi-medical solutions to mental health problems, and focuses on nonsensical symptom management techniques, and on ‘coping’. Coping is really just another word for ‘surviving’, and not living fully. The prevalent approaches to psychological suffering tell people that they ‘should’ be ‘happy’, or ‘OK’ regardless of whether or not they feel they are growing or that their life has any meaning."
Thank you for this, which gives me a perspective on what I have been observing from my perch as a parent and a teacher of young people. I am frankly aghast at what is going on where I live (Germany) in terms of therapeutic help for the children and teens with whom I share my time. The covid measures have left many of them despairing and yet they are expected to simply carry on as if the past three years did not happen. The "services" provided seem to consist primarily of CBT, where they are paired with the next available therapist (regardless of whether they like or trust the particular individual) to get them functional and back to school. Or they are sent to residential treatment and whisked away from everything and everyone that is meaningful to them for a kind of factory reset.
The success of these measures for the kids I know has been dismal when it comes to helping them rediscover their spark. They variously pick up on and internalize their supposed brokenness (the identity being handed to them by the adults) or are deemed uncooperative for rightly seeing through the nonsense and not going along with it. Yet instead of questioning the efficacy of the treatment, the children are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, blamed for not properly responding.
"Any approach that focuses on symptoms in isolation from the context of the whole person and their reality, is doomed to fail."
Regrettably, this is exactly what IAPT services (NHS psychotherapy) do. Progress in therapy is defined in terms of the reduction of a patient's PHQ9 (questionnaire used as a measure of depression) or GAD7 (questionnaire used as a measure of anxiety) scores. These are religiously collected by therapists at the start of each therapy session to, supposedly, see how the patient is doing. I can only imagine that patients find this incredibly objectifying. I know that I would.
I think you would appreciate the book "CBT: The Cognitive Behavioural Tsunami: Managerialism, Politics and the Corruption of Science" by Farhad Dalal, which offers a multi-sided critique of CBT-based IAPT services. The breadth of Dalal's analysis and critique is impressive.