>Psychology is in its foundation the same expression of
>methodological individualism that economics is, and is thus just a
>different form of parapsychology (say, like Catholicism is a respectable
>form of cult thinking). In fact, it was my intense dissatisfaction with
>the explanatory and methodological pretensions of psychology that led
>me,
>by various routes, back to Marx. All the issues Amin identifies with
>parascience in economics are present in psychology as well, and even
>some
>of the same names pop up. My copy of William Ryan's "Equality," a
>full-frontal attack on methodological individualism in education, has a
>publisher's blurb touting it as "A necessary balance... for Milton and
Rose
>Friedman's 'Free to Choose.'"
>
>Where the parascience of economics wants to "found" the picture of its
>enterprises on the rational choice of individuals, psychology wants to
>found the behavior of individuals (rational choices among them) on the
>inner contents of each individual (genes, memories, "reinforcement
>histories," traits, egos, and so on). The earth is no firmer there, and
>for the same reasons.
[...]
>Religion used to be the opiate of the people, but nowadays it's
>psychology.
>
>Roland Chrisjohn
Psychology and economics (as parasciences) do indeed share the fallacy of pure individualism, but they're also fundamentally at odds. Economics boils down to the assertion that the individual is sovereign. There are no limits to this sovereignty, either from nature or society. In this sense it's quite Christian, with the human soul as master of the earth and all its treasures, our mastery over markets even constituting a kind of ascension. Psychology, on the other hand, posits the negation of individual sovereignty. The central myth here is that your sins and your suffering are mere symptoms of disease. This holds whether the mind is viewed as a thing-in-itself or demoted to the epiphenomenon of a wholly deterministic brain. Our capacity for self-determination is dissolved into an ocean of either neural or unconscious forces (or some combination). These, in turn, are reduced to ancient genetic or mythic material. Economics is the triumph of the soul, psychology its extinction.
Ted Dace