Part 3: A Study of Psychology

In the first part of our treatise on psychology and psychiatry, we delved into the reality of the human person; the whole person, mind, body and soul, as a person created by God. The human person should thus be treated with the respect and dignity that is his due. In part 1, Bishop Fulton Sheen explained to us in detail how the Christian perspective of the science of psychiatry and psychology should be conducted.

In part 2 we studied the founders of psychology and psychiatry and realized that in the majority, a Christocentric methodology was not a part of their intellectual development or education. Instead, they followed ideologies which led them, in general, to view the human person as either sub-human, a pagan deity (Adolf Hitler, see part 2), or animal. Because of this, they performed (and still perform) experiments with impunity, bringing into light theories that were often unrealistic and that transgressed the laws of God and nature.

First Hospitals

We will see how throughout the years, the treatment of mental illness was developed. For the most part, the methods used were not scientifically based and the repercussions of this continue to this day. Psychologists use methods that, even though they may have been tested, the negative results were often ignored in face of the impending profits to be obtained.

In the early days of psychiatry, the people who were considered insane or unwanted by society were locked up to keep them out of the way. Many times families did not know how to cope with the behaviors evidenced by the mentally ill.

Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, (also known as "Bedlam") was one of the world's first psychiatric hospitals. Bedlam was in actuality little more than a warehouse, where those who were labeled insane were taken and locked away. Inmates were confined to cages, closets and animal stalls. They were chained to walls and flogged, while the asylum charged admission for public viewings.

William Battie (President of the Royal College of Physicians in the 18th century), was the first to promote that his institutions could cure the mentally ill. Battie's madhouses made him one of the richest men in England, although his methods were every bit as inhumane as those practiced in Bedlam. His financial success triggered a boom in the asylum business and an opportunity for psychiatrists to cash in on this new growth industry. During this period, from the late 1700's to the early 1800's, large institutions for the mentally insane began to be built all over the world. These continue to this day and the conditions have not improved notably through the years.¹

Biological versus mental

Psychologists during this time decided that because they were not yet recognized by the public as members of the medical profession, they needed to justify their entrance into the profession. They decided to invent "biological" methods for treating mental disease. So they told the public that people contracted a mental disorder because of a biological issue. During this time, they used any method that would make the person more manageable and called it "treatment." The tragic reality is that many of these so-called treatments were in essence, torture.

They had one instrument that was a platform with a huge tub of water underneath, full of freezing cold water. They would pull a lever and the patient would fall into the water. This treatment was supposed to shock the patient into submission. There was another method during which they would put the person into a coffin and then lower it into a bath of water, then after a time, they would open it and try to revive the patient. They advocated that these cold-water shock treatments chased the "toxins" of mental illness out of the body. There were many treatments of this nature, even though the mortality rate was very high and there were, quite logically, no cures.

Psychiatrists then decided to give these treatments medical names, thus establishing a "medical model" for themselves. They thought that this would give their methods credence in the eyes of the public.

An American psychiatrist named Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) then issued a statement saying that mental illness was caused by too much blood in the head. The "cure" would be to remove the blood by any means possible: restraint, cold water, bleeding, or even terror.

With that new method, a new medical model was created. Rush was known as the "master bleeder," he bled his patients for every kind of illness imaginable. He also invented something called the "tranquilizer." (See photo). Rush detailed all of his theories and inventions in a 1812 textbook entitled Medical Inquiries and Observations upon Diseases of the Mind. This was used by psychiatrists as an authoritative source for the following 70 years.²

Dr. Henry Cotton (1876-1933) was convinced that he had uncovered the single source of psychosis and that was in the pus from infections in teeth or intestines. Cotton's "cure" was in the simple (but often deadly) removal of all infectious organs and many of his patients died due to these surgeries. Yet Henry Cotton continued to pursue this idea with fierce determination. None of his professional colleagues made more than the feeblest effort to rein him in, even though subsequent close study of the hospital records indicated a mortality rate of nearly 45 percent.

When Cotton's patron, Adolf Meyer, was presented with a meticulous report that showed the approach adopted by Cotton was useless and massively harmful – he suppressed the report and allowed the slaughter to proceed. By the time Cotton dropped dead of a heart attack at his private club in May 1933, hundreds of patients had died and thousands more had been maimed.³

Throughout the following centuries, the system of psychiatry decided that they needed to convince the public that there were many underlying diseases of the psyche that were untreated and, if only the public would trust them, they could be treated.

Unfortunately, the psychologists then began to benefit from the enormous profits. Their avarice caused them to turn their patients into victims; those very same people for whom they had taken a vow (Hippocratic Oath) to treat and cure.

At the Leipzig University in Germany, Wilhelm Wundt (1832-1920) experimented on the human senses and said that man's thoughts, moods, behavior and personality were nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain. "Observations of the facts of consciousness is of no avail until these are derived from chemical and physical processes. Thought is simply a result of brain activity," wrote Wundt.

Wundt became frustrated with his inability to change behaviors and so created a new "science" by stating that man was an animal without a soul that could be trained. In other words, man is not a thinker but is only meant to be trained. Students from around the world went to Germany to study Wundt's new definition of man. They based their philosophies on the writings of Freidrich Nietzsche. (See part 2 of the series for more information on Nietzsche).

Afterwards, Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) conducted animal experiments, seeking to modify human behavior based on the teachings of Wundt. He experimented with the stimulus/response theory, first on dogs, than on children. He punched a hole in the jowl's of dogs and put a device with which to collect and measure their saliva; later he did the same thing with children. His research became one of the major sources of psychology in the 20th century. His theories (that behavior can be controlled through repetitive conditioning) became known as behaviorism. The behaviorists believe that all children are animals and can be trained as animals.

Harvard professor, Psychologist B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) believed that all behavior could be manipulated to suit whatever ends the behavioral psychologist was seeking. Skinner became famous for creating new behavior patterns, which he tested on pigeons, rats and children. Perhaps his most notorious experiment was something called the "Skinner Box." It was like a big playpen, but everything inside it was controlled, temperature, light, etc. He presented children (placed inside this box) with different stimuli, so that they would learn to react to it. For nearly a year, Skinner isolated his own daughter inside this box which was very similar to those he built for rats, in order that he might conduct his experiments on her.

In a book entitled Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Skinner put forth the notion that man has no indwelling personality, will, intention, self-determinism or personal responsibility. He said that modern man's concept of freedom and dignity have to fall away so man could be "intelligently controlled to behave as he should."⁴

These same techniques that were developed by Pavlov and Skinner are being used today by behavioral researchers. The United States Institute of Mental Health pays out $40 million dollars per year of taxpayer money to finance this research. This amounts to $19 billion dollars since 1948.

The Judge Rotenberg Center is a prime example of this⁵. At this center, the children who are inpatients are hooked up to 270-volt batteries and shocked in a procedure called "aversion therapy." The students are instructed to do as they are told, or else they will receive an electric shock from a device strapped to their arm.

Greg Miller, a former teacher at Rotenberg, stated that: "The student is expected to sit there and let the electricity pass through their system. If they try to remove it, they get an additional shock." In order to send a student to Judge Rotenberg from New York, it costs about $214,000 per student per year. In reality, these students are tortured because they are given this shock therapy for no other reason than to inflict pain.

Other techniques include administering electric shock to treat other mental disorders, including sexual deviance. The sending of powerful magnetic impulses through the skull to interrupt brain activity and shooting high voltage through surgically implanted electrodes is meant to stifle "problem" behavior and costs up to $100,000 per patient.

Perhaps there is a success rate involved in this method but what is the point to "train" through the infliction of pain? Especially when there are natural methods that are far more successful and that correspond to the dignity of the human person.

Eugenics

The eugenics movement was started in 1883 by Francis Galton. He felt that human beings should take evolution in their own hands and that only the most talented individuals, the most healthy and attractive individuals, should have more offspring. They had concerns that those who they considered as having "poor" genes were reproducing faster than the people they considered had "good" genes. They felt that a medical solution was necessary and this is what led to the sterilization movement.⁶

By the early part of the 20th century, the eugenics movement had spread to 30 countries, from England to Brazil, Sweden, Russia, and the United States, where forced sterilization was widely practiced. Alfred Ploetz and Ernst Rudin, two German psychiatrists, were instrumental in developing the eugenics program used by Adolf Hitler. They established the first organization for racial hygiene. These practices are promoted on a huge scale today by Planned Parenthood and other abortion/eugenics groups. (We will speak more on the topic of eugenics and abortion in a future issue of MICHAEL).

Intentional damage

Starting in the 1920's, psychiatrists advocated a new group of procedures that claimed to work by creating intentional damage to the brain. Manfred Sakel (1900-1957) had a theory that it was possible to only kill only the bad cells in the brain, that somehow we have good and bad brain cells. So in other words, if you give the patient enough insulin in the brain, it is possible to kill the bad brain cells. If the patient could survive the resulting epilepsy, they would be much better off for the "treatment." These shots of insulin caused spinal cord injuries in 40% of the patients, due to the convulsions brought about by the epilepsy. Sakel pointed out how the patients after the treatment had a "child-like state" and declared his treatments a success. He did not research into the fact that this procedure could have caused a type of brain-damage, thus inducing the "child-like state."

Dr. Ladislaus Von Meduna (1896-1964) had the idea that seizures could be used to treat schizophrenia. He tried several pharmacological agents to safely induce convulsions, such as the alcaloids strychnine, thebaine, coramin, caffeine and brucin. He stated that an induced seizure would in effect, "drive out" the schizophrenia because his theories were based on the idea that schizophrenia and seizures could not exist in the same brain. This of course, was erroneous and purely guesswork. Soon, Meduna discovered metrazol (brand name Cardiazol), a powerful convulsant agent, as being more effective and quick-acting than camphor, and he started using it in intramuscular and intravenous injections.

By 1939 his methods became so popular that they were used in 70% of American hospitals and in almost every other country in the world. The popularity of insulin and metrazol led to other forms of brain-damaging treatment: lobotomy and electro-convulsive shock therapy.

Lobotomy

Neurologist Dr. Egas Moniz, (1874-1955) developed a technique of drilling a hole into a patient's skull and pouring pure alcohol into it. This would kill the tissue of the frontal lobes of the brain. Moniz called this new procedure a lobotomy.

Although Moniz invented the procedure, Dr. Walter J. Freeman (1895-1972) became the most notorious practitioner for lobotomies. He discovered that he could do a lobotomy faster, by inserting an ice pick into the brain (right under the orbital bone) and then drag it back and forth until he was satisfied that he had caused enough disruption of the brain tissue. (See photo below).

Dr. Freeman took his trade on the road, often performing lobotomies without a referral from a doctor, causing irreparable damage to many innocent people. By the time the authorities realized what he was doing and his medical privileges were taken away, he had performed or supervised lobotomies on 3,500 patients. More than 25% of these operations, by his own admission, left his patients in a vegetative state.

Rosemary Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy underwent a lobotomy in 1941, when she was 23. Doctors told her father that the procedure would help calm her mood swings. Instead of the hoped-for result, Rosemary was left with an infantile mentality and her speech became unintelligible. She would stare blankly at a wall for hours. She went from a woman able (if somewhat mentally challenged) to live on her own and hold a job, to a woman incapable of taking care of herself. She was institutionlized for the rest of her life and died at Fort Memorial Hospital in 2005.⁷

From the 40's to the 60's, the new method involved 1 million people, until they came to the conclusion that this was a destructive treatment, through the death of a patient during the procedure. It is still used today but on a much smaller scale. Due to the failure to obtain relief of mental illness, logically it should have been discarded completely.⁸

Electro-convulsive shock therapy

In 1938, two Italian psychiatrists named Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, observed that before slaughtering pigs, butchers would apply electrodes to the pig's temples. These electrodes were hooked up to a wall current. This electric shock stunned the pigs but did not kill them. The butchers could then slaughter the pigs without any problems. This gave the two psychiatrists the idea of inducing convulsions (such as was done by Dr. Von Meduna) using electricity.

This introduced a whole other area in which convulsions would generate. To see teeth falling out, broken spines, bones knocked out of joint, broken bones and people getting internal organ damage from being restrained while they were writhing uncontrollably from the induced seizures was not uncommon.

Introduced in the 1930's, this technique was called electro-convulsive therapy or ETC. Although the use of anesthetics and paralyzing agents now prevent the convulsive reaction from ETC, it is a misconception to say that the technique has improved only because the patient is not necessarily aware of what is taking place due to the anesthetic. Just because the person is not shaking all over the table, it does not mean there is an improvement. The ultimate result is worst than the original because we have no idea of the effects of this on the human brain. Two-thirds of those who receive electro-shock therapy are women with premenstrual syndrome, menopausal disorder, or post-partum depression. Half of electro-shock patients are elderly, once they become eligible for government health care at aged sixty-five, 360% more American seniors receive ECT than at age sixty-four.

Liz Spikol, the senior contributing editor of Philadelphia Weekly, wrote of her ECT experience in 1996, "Not only was the ECT ineffective, it was incredibly damaging to my cognitive functioning and memory. But sometimes it's hard to be sure of yourself when everyone "credible" – scientists, ECT docs, researchers – are telling you that your reality isn't real. How many times have I been told my memory loss wasn't due to ECT but to depression? How many times have I been told that, like a lot of other consumers, I must be perceiving this incorrectly? How many times have people told me that my feelings of trauma related to the ECT are misplaced and unusual? It's as if I was raped and people kept telling me not to be upset – that it wasn't that bad."⁹

Registered nurse Barbara C. Cody wrote in the Washington Post that her life was forever changed by the 13 outpatient ECTs she received in 1983. "Shock'therapy'totally and permanently disabled me. EEGs [electroencephalograms] verify the extensive damage shock did to my brain. Fifteen to 20 years of my life were simply erased; only small bits and pieces have returned. I was also left with short-term memory impairment and serious cognitive deficits. Shock'therapy'took my past, my college education, my musical abilities, even the knowledge that my children were, in fact, my children. I call ECT a rape of the soul."

The ECT machine can produce anywhere from 50 to 400 volts. (This percentage of voltage is usually used in a steel mill or a printing press; in other words, some large piece of machinery.) Introduce this into the fragile brain or body of a person and we can only imagine the full effects. Abuse of this technology has been documented in various situations and in many countries. What does this all add up to? It leads to the fact that there are over 40,000 people dead and countless others disabled, because of ECT. Psychiatrists in the United States alone, bring in 5 billion dollars per year via electro-convulsive therapy.

Throughout the years, man has often been his own greatest enemy. We have seen this in many of the world's disasters, such as abortion and world wars; in the inhumane treatment of one person by another. It often brings man to question his fundamental role in life and indeed, question the very purpose of his existence. Pope John Paul II addressed these questions in his profound teaching on Theology of the Body. Our understanding of ourselves as persons created in the image and likeness of God affects us and has the possibility to change how we interact with our fellow human beings. Our rejection of God's revelation of love that He inscribed into our bodies is the root of all of these problems.

Psychology is a science that has the possibility to resolve many of the questions of man and to aid in the advancement of his interior life. But this will only be realized when a sincere desire to be at the service of the other with total selflessness is put into action. Greed, power and the temptation to use and dominate cannot lead to healing of either soul or body. Let us analyze the objective goals and realize that truth exists only where God is found. "Our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in Thee."

(End of Part 3)

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a

1.) Life Magazine, May 6, 1946 “Bedlam 1946”

2.) Rush, Benjamin, Medical Inquiries and Observations Upon the Diseases of the Mind: Published by Kimber & Richardson, 1812

3.) Mad in America, by Robert Whitaker, Published by Rerseus Publishing, 2002

4.)  Beyond Freedom and Dignity, Hackett Publishing Company, 1971

5.)  Observations and Findings of Out-of-State Program Visitation to the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center: http://boston.com/news/daily/15/school_report.pdf

6.) Hereditary Genius, Published by Macmillan and Co. 1869

7.) Washington Post, January 8, 2005

8.)  www.psychosurgery.org

9.) Philadelphia Weekly, December 22, 2006