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Defenders of the free market insist that virtue is essential to a just and thriving economy. If morality is relevant to economics, it is equally so to allied fields of social science, all of which have as their object of investigation the human person. Indifference to the moral dimension distorts the study of human action in economics; so too does it deform the discipline that reaches behind that action to the human mind: psychology.<\/p>\n

Built on a sound anthropological foundation and guided by an equally sound morality that is clear on the proper goals of human life, the empirical findings and practical techniques of psychology can foster the flourishing of both persons and communities. Unfortunately, as Theodore Dalrymple argues in his most recent book Admirable Evasions: How Psychology Undermines Morality<\/em><\/a>, contemporary psychology has long been not only hostile to traditional morality but also indifferent to and dismissive of the larger context of Western culture within which it arose. As a result contemporary psychology, according to Dalrymple, \u201cis not a key to self-understanding but a cultural barrier to such understanding as we can achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n

Operating within its own limits, psychology can be helpful. Too often however we appeal to psychology for assistance without a proper understanding of the empirical and moral limits of the discipline. Like all social sciences, psychology\u2019s findings are expressed in probabilities that are narrowly defined by the researcher. In other words, given a specific set of variables (which ignore others for the sake of the research), in a given percentage of cases this or that is likely true. Like all sciences, psychology knows the general but it does so at the expense of the particular about which it knows only probabilities.<\/p>\n

Dalrymple\u2019s observation about behavioral psychology is true of the whole discipline (and as Hayek reminds us, economics as well): \u201cWhat started as methodology became ontology.\u201d Rather than situating itself modestly within the larger context of the Western intellectual tradition, psychology set itself up as a critic of the culture. This isn\u2019t limited to the deformative aspects of culture and personal behavior that have been the concern of critics since Socrates and the Old Testament prophets. No like Freud\u2019s Oedipus, psychologists and psychology have increasingly sought to undermine the culture itself.<\/p>\n

And so, Dalrymple says, \u201cthe overall effect of psychological thought on human culture and society \u2026 has been overwhelmingly negative.\u201d Why? Because, he says, \u201cit gives the false impression of greatly increased human self-understanding where none has been achieved, it encourages the evasion of responsibility by turning subjects into objects where it supposedly takes account of or interests itself in subjective experience, and it makes shallow the human character because it discourages genuine self-examination and self-knowledge.\u201d Unmoored from the Western Christian tradition as canonical, contemporary psychology \u201cis ultimately sentimental and promotes the grossest self-pity, for it makes everyone (apart from scapegoats) victims of their own behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, used \u201csparingly and with discretion\u201d psychology can \u201cbe very useful to carefully selected individuals.\u201d Though narrowly defined, we ought not to minimize or reject the real insights and benefits of psychology. That said, Dalrymple warns that we must be mindful of \u201cthe self-aggrandizing nature of most modern \u2018caring\u2019 professions that alleged competence in and sovereignty over matters which are beyond the reach of technical understanding or solution undermine any residual modesty, realism, or judgment that they might otherwise still have had.\u201d<\/p>\n

Human flourishing is never simply a technical matter but requires \u201cappreciation of the tragic dimension.\u201d Without this \u201call is shallowness; and those without it are destined for a life that is nasty and brutish, if not necessarily short.\u201d Whether, as Dalrymple concludes, \u201cit is psychology\u2019s vocation to deny and hide\u201d all this \u201cfrom view with a thin veneer of science\u201d is for me an open question. That said, he makes a good case for the proposition that, psychology \u201cis a watered-down secular version of Christian redemption, with Man in the place of God.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dalrymple\u2019s critique is a salutary reminder that, while our efforts to build the Kingdom of God benefit from the scientific knowledge provided by the methods of economics and psychology, we are still more dependent on the wisdom supplied by Christian revelation and moral philosophy. <\/p>\n

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$\"Fr.$ <\/a>
Fr. Gregory Jensen<\/p><\/div>The Rev. Gregory Jensen is a social scientist specializing in religion and personality theory. Currently he is the interim pastor of St Ignatius Orthodox Church in Madison, WI and Orthodox Chaplain at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He blogs at Koinonia<\/a> and the American Orthodox Institute<\/a>. In 2013, he was a Lone Mountain Fellow with the Bozeman, Mont.-based Property and Environmental Research Center (PERC).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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