What You'll Learn:
A British physician and psychiatrist argues that psychology enables numerous opportunities to sidestep the moral life by insisting that human dysfunction is due to environment or other factors beyond the individual’s control.
Key Insights:
- It’s not evident that psychology has made the world a better place.
- Freud’s insights were neither brilliant nor original.
- The therapy model needs weakness and vulnerability like a predator needs prey.
- Parity laws have encouraged our culture to talk about psychological disturbance as disease.
- Culture’s “who are you to judge?” convention is driven more by self-preservation than beneficence.
- Self-esteem and self-love are threads that unite the various schools of psychology—to detrimental effect.