The Blame Game

Approximately 22 percent of adults in the U.S. suffer from diagnosable mental disorders. This statistic attracts a lot of converts to the new religion of psychiatry. Although most recognized religions have a set of rules and moral imperatives, such as the Ten Commandments, which one must follow, this is not the case with psychiatry, which places the blame elsewhere. Psychiatry takes away guilt and responsibility for one’s actions or omissions — how nice! — and replaces them with something akin to “the Devil made me do it.” The Devil in this case has been replaced by the words “addiction” and “compulsion,” etc.

In psychiatry, chemical imbalances explain away reprehensible behavior. Failing that, it can always be attributed to your parents. Your mother is usually the culprit when the blame is assessed, either because she didn’t love you enough or she smothered you with it. Either way, it’s not your fault.

Psychiatry has replaced pastoral counseling in many of our churches. Bishop Fulton J. Sheen warned in the 1960s of the disintegration of religious values and social responsibility at the hands of psychiatry. A 1986 survey published by The American Journal of Psychiatry found that 95 percent of psychiatrists consider themselves atheist or agnostic. Sigmund Freud, in his book The Future of an Illusion, called religion “the universal neurosis of humanity.”

Paul Pruyser, former director of the Department of Education of the Menninger Foundation, a psychiatric group in the U.S., reported on the impact of the psychiatric disciplines on the training of the clergy: “The word soul has lost its meaning and even its plausibility…. Faith, hope and love can no longer be seen simply as virtues or graces; they are processes in flesh and blood.”