"Back in 1979 Jensen's mate Hans Isnek (spelt wrong) arrived at the University of Sydney where I was a student. We held a protest naturally enough over his visit and over the fact that academic critics had been excluded from his lectures. Afterwards many of us were charged by the university, none of this was important, except for this minor fact. Members of the psychology department made up assualt charges against us. Again not a big thing either. But what followed astounded me, the silence of all the psychology staff, many of whom witnessed the absense of any such assualts. Moreover, the that they as a whole called for the expulsion of thge students at the protest."
One can take psychology in two ways: as a normative science or as a means of human enlightenment and liberation. In the first case, it is used to support and reinforce the status quo. In the second sense, it is used as a kind of domestic anthropological practice, which allows us to see and understand the ways in which existing social practices inform and deform our consciousness. (Thinkers in the second camp include Fenichel, Fanon, Laing, Szazz (sp?) and others.)
Normative psychology delights in numbers and statistics, takes what Greg calls the Crusoe individual as its subject, and is responsible for extraordinary human misery. The example Greg gave, of the participation of the psychology department in the repression of students, does not surprise me in the least. Perhaps some of you remember the participation in Uruguay of academic psychologists in the design, training, and operations of tortures (psychological and otherwise) that were inflicted on upwards of one third of the population who were cycled through the prisons following a military coup about twenty five (?) years ago. I also remember reading somewhere that the two professions most heavily represented in the Nazi party were psychologists and gyneacologists.
As I mentioned before, I have been interested in psychology and psychoanalysis most of my adult life. But that river has a number of tributaries, some of them quite deadly.
Joanna