Ignoring essential mechanisms

Often in mainstream psychology the essential mechanism – by which is meant the mechanism which is responsible for the bulk of the effects – is obscured or ignored entirely. In Neurotic Suspension (including ‘Bystander Apathy’) the essential problem is failing to respond to a signal. In the well known mock prison experiment by Zimbardo, the dominant phenomenon (it is obvious to me, certainly as far as the “guards” were concerned) is EBIAR: Exaggerated Behaviour in Alien Role.

EBIAR has been observed in many different situations. Examples are female police officers and security guards throwing their weight around; people who have stopped smoking becoming strongly anti-tobacco; recent converts to an ideology or religion being exceptionally fervent; new female driving examiners being inordinately strict; men slobbering over babies.

There are political motives behind this failure to identify certain essential mechanisms. For example, admitting the existence of EBIAR when women adopt formerly masculine roles is but a short step from acknowledging that men and women have natural roles, with aberrant behaviour the result when these roles are reversed.

Some of the other glaringly obvious traits, behaviours and effects which are not addressed, or certainly not to the extent they deserve, in contemporary psychology include:

• Sex differences
• Racial differences (e.g. in ethnocentricity and imitation)
• Female signalling and its effects
• Neurosis (Pavlov; MRI scans?)
• Ambivalence
• Transduction (and priming effects)
• Effects of TV and propaganda in general
• The capacity to ignore behaviour which conflicts with an established stereotype
• Jung’s hypothesis that people should have sex regularly to maintain their psychological health
• The Loser and Malign Encouragement strategies.

To be fair, there are evident difficulties in humans studying humans. We are very susceptible to distortions of perception, and psychologists are as prone to them as their experimental subjects. Lewis Wolpert detailed this in The Unnatural Nature of Science (1992). Darwin managed a high level of scientific objectivity but this was apparently achieved only after thoroughly training himself by years of observation of the animal kingdom. However, when essential human mechanisms are consistently ignored it cannot be accidental.

Malign Encouragement

A most important strategy, Malign Encouragement, has never, to my knowledge, been formally defined till now. An obvious explanation for this omission is that the people doing the defining are themselves practising Malign Encouragement.

Malign Encouragement is encouraging an opponent to pursue an adverse policy. It is most extensively detailed in Sex & Power pp.120-123 but a simple strategy matrix appears at the bottom of the Basics of Procedural Analysis page.

Jews in psychology

I almost feel I should apologize, because in bringing up the Jewish issue again I start to sound like a stuck record, even to myself. However even a cursory foray into orthodox psychology makes one conscious of their enormous influence on the subject.

Racial differences are hardly mentioned in contemporary psychology, although it is often implicit that the normal subject group is White. Psychology as often practised seems to consist of constructing experiments demonstrating how compliant, amoral etc. White people are, while the all-knowing, all-wise outsider looks on; Milgram is the archetype here. Other Jews write books quoting each other, giving the illusion of objective debate, treating each standpoint respectfully, although within strict limits. Anything outside of those limits, which may actually touch on the truth, is treated as anathema and mendaciously represented, as when Gross in his fifth edition claims that applying sociobiology to humans “removes guilt and responsibility” (2005, p. 894).

In reality, guilt and responsibility are defined by the social structures we establish and inhabit. For instance, the rural Pakistani who engages in an honour killing does not feel guilt, but more likely pride in upholding his family’s honour. That is the norm in their sociobiological environment, an establishment which ultimately derives from instinct.

Heritable behaviour: Vilifying the truth

If the very reasonable, if not obvious, suggestion is made that behaviour can be hereditary, more clouds of obfuscating ink are produced. Then a real novelty – proof is demanded! ‘Show us the gene’ they say, while row upon row of their unproven, and largely unprovable, speculations fill our library shelves. Gross goes on to accuse scientific psychologists of reification and using metaphors while contemporary psychology groans under the weight of them.

Most, I think all, of Boas, Milgram, Zimbardo, Gansberg (the Kitty Genovese reporter), Gross, Rose, Lewontin and Kamin were Jews. The latter, a self-confessed Marxist, ruined the reputation of a decent man, Cyril Burt, because his findings challenged the narrative. (This episode has been detailed by J. Philippe Rushton.) Kamin sat in his ivory tower like a New Orleans sniper poised to renew the attack on any psychologist who tried to replicate Burt’s results. At least we have no terminological difficulty for this behaviour, as a word already exists: chutzpah, which is Yiddish for ‘barefaced audacity.’

If we are to understand human behaviour the veritable flood of obfuscation in psychology must be addressed. I hope to add to these pages relating PA to orthodox psychology in the future, as time and circumstances permit.