After thousands of years of experiencing psychofraud and seeing it repeatedly exposed, one would think that humanity would have learned to distrust and avoid it. However, psychofraud is still with us and growing. In the past it was mostly religious in nature, but the advent and success of systematic science has caused it to acquire pseudoscientific trappings. We can see this in the so-called scientific socialism of Marxism, which is no more scientific than Thomistic theology and considerably less rigorous (50).

The current surge of interest in "scientific" astrology is even more bewildering. Astrology has been practiced for thousands of years. One would think that if there were anything to it, someone would have put it to practical use by now and used astrological "science" to rule the world or at least make a killing on the stock market. Hitler tried to use astrological "science" in lieu of sound military strategy. The results are history. Yet many thousands of apparently intelligent people take astrology seriously. Nevertheless, it is in the social "sciences" that psychofraud seems to have its most pernicious effects.

 

Social "Science"

The purpose of any science is to predict and control the environment with which it is concerned. Social science is concerned with human behavior. If social "science" were truly scientific, it could be scientifically demonstrated. Yet we see that other than by physical coercion and primitive conditioning techniques, humanity seems to have been quite ineffective in predicting and controlling its own behavior. For example, the most rigorous and quantitative social "science" is economics. Yet we see famous economic "experts" giving contradictory advice on all important subjects and making dismally wrong predictions. We see political and social systems turned upside down to accommodate some economic theory. Still the economic predictions turn out to be in serious error.

The psychotherapists tell us how to raise mentally healthy children with the use of psychotherapeutic principles. Several generations of children were raised this way. Yet the number of mental patients skyrockets (157). There seems to be no discernable beneficial effect from incorporating psychotherapeutic principles into our culture.

The principles of scientific method are well understood. Many social "scientists" give them lip service (137, 138); yet they are not used except in the most trivial and banal cases. The really important problems of how to increase human creativity and well-being are almost never treated scientifically, i.e., knowledge of these problems is not developed systematically on the basis of experiments with placebo and other controls. Why not?

The first answer that comes to mind is that there are so many interacting variables influencing social phenomena that it is not possible to do controlled experiments. However, if we look at the psychosocial theories, we see that these are very simple theories which explain complex behavioral phenomena on the basis of a few simple hypotheses. The following, simplified examples, represent the distillation to their essential components of four psychosocial theories which are currently affecting millions of human lives.

Example 1. "Capitalism is the source of all human misery. Eliminate all forms of private ownership; concentrate all the means of production in the public's hands and we will automatically create a paradise on earth." Yet communist countries are not exactly paradises, particularly for creative persons.

Example 2. "Unequal scholastic performance is due to unequal educational opportunity. Equalize the educational opportunity and all children will perform equally well in school." Yet we know that this does not happen. Reflect on the large numbers of children with wealthy parents, who are scholastic failures, and the large number of poor children who are outstanding achievers, such as Joseph Haydn, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, Booker T. Washington, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, G. B. Shaw, and the eminent black American mathematician, David Blackwell (68, 69, 98).

Example 3. "There can be no neuroses if a person has a normal sex life. Create an environment where people can have a full and uninhibited sex life and we will eliminate all forms of neuroses." This is clearly not the case. Sex has been increasingly freely and openly discussed and practiced; yet by all accounts, neuroses are increasing (157).

Example 4. "Human behavior is nothing but a series of conditioned responses. Give me the specifications and a child at birth, and I will give you the specified adult." This latter ideology of the behaviorist school of psychology has clearly not worked; to date, not a single behaviorist has produced an outstanding creative genius among his children. Indeed their children seem to be on the whole as ordinary as their parents. Behaviorism will be discussed in greater detail later.

What all these separate and distinct social science theories and ideologies have in common is that (1) they each seem to contain elements of truth, (2) they grossly oversimplify the actual case, and (3) they are accepted as true without experimental proof. It is the human tendency to grossly oversimplify reality and not verify by objective experimentation that engenders psychofraud in social science. The interconnectedness of all causative factors must be considered if a psychosocial theory is to reflect reality.

 

The Search for Simplicity

As was discussed earlier, human beings seem to have an innate need to predict and control their total environment. When a situation is not understood, the simplest feasible explanation which makes the person feel that he now has some understanding, i.e., ability to predict and control, will be accepted. To primitive man, the simplest explanation was that the universe was inhabited by spirits who caused all the natural phenomena he saw, just as the phenomena of his own body was caused by his spirit, which inhabited his body and which he perceived directly. This theory did not enable him to predict and control very much, but it gave him some peace of mind and enabled him to think he understood and could control nature through magic and prayers.

As more complex and more scientific models of the universe were developed, humanity became better able to predict its total environment. However, knowledge is such that we cannot learn to better predict and control one aspect of the environment without almost simultaneously learning of a new aspect of the environment which was previously unknown and therefore unpredictable to us. For example, the development of classical physics (Newtonian mechanics, optics, the electromagnetic theory, etc.) led to our technological civilization. Technological civilization in turn caused problems of pollution, industrial exploitation, weapons of mass destruction, overpopulation, etc. The increase of knowledge in classical physics led to modern physics (relativity, field theory, quantum mechanics, etc.) which, in the words of J. G. S. Haldane, indicate "that the universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we can imagine." Dens non est machine. Darwin's theory of evolution and its modern forms, molecular biology, and mathematical genetics have destroyed the simple view of individual, unique creation for each life-form and shown that there is a continuum of complexity from matter to life and that man has more in common with other life-forms than he thought (96). We are now aware of the incredible biophysical complexities of life, as, in the past, we did not even conceive of these complexities, but regarded life-forms as units.

Biophysical neurophysiology indicates that there is a one-to-one relationship between mind states and brain states (13, 15, 125, 139, 149). However, we are just beginning to explore the complexity of the human brain, which is the most complex aspect of life known to man. As we begin to better understand the brain and the nature of mental fields, a whole new universe of incredible complexity will be discovered, and we will once again realize that as our knowledge of the universe grows, so does our knowledge of our ignorance.

It has been said that (1) the wisest man is the man who knows and knows he knows, (2) the next wisest man is the man who knows but does not know he knows, (3) the third wisest man is the man who does not know and knows he does not know, and (4) the most ignorant man is the man who does not know but thinks he knows. The last man is a victim of psychofraud. Most of humanity has been in this latter category for thousands of years. True knowledge begins only when we begin to doubt our knowledge.

Humanity has a dilemma. It cannot acquire true knowledge without at the same time becoming more aware of its own ignorance. It is much more comforting to have pseudo-knowledge, which gives a simple explanation of everything in the universe and keeps us ignorant of our own ignorance, than to have true knowledge, which makes us aware of how much we still have to learn.

Religion, for example, explains everything in the universe and makes those who accept it feel that they have nothing more of real importance to learn. It is only when someone shows that he can predict and control better than religion in some aspect of the environment that religious foundations begin to crumble. Since religion cannot compete with science in effectiveness, it continuously narrows its focus to those parts of the total environment which have not yet yielded to the scientific method.

This begins with the physical environment. Where prayer was once used to ward off physical disaster, science explains, predicts and eventually enables us to control everything from tempests to eclipses and earthquakes. As the scientific ability to predict and control increases, people rely less and less on religious means for dealing with these phenomena. Persons may, at present, now pray to avoid disaster in an earthquake, but they will no longer do this when science learns how to predict and control earthquakes. Similarly, man once prayed for rain, but he ceased to so do when he learned to control it by cloud seeding. People used to pray for their health during plague epidemics. Now, if they are sensible, they merely get inoculated. However, this increasing ability to predict and control has opened a Pandora's box of new problems.

 

Pandora's Box

Once man chose a scientific way of coping with nature, he became increasingly dependent on science for his very survival. Try as he would, he could not for long avoid reality, or his technological civilization would collapse, and he would perish along with it (50). Yet the truly important questions—Who am I? Where am I going? What is the meaning of my existence? How can human beings live together in a progressive society?—seem to have been left unanswered by science. Still there was no shortage of psycho-fraudulent ideologies which claimed to answer them. Man continued to cling to comforting ideologies and accept new ones when they were more attractive or logically consistent than the existing systems.

It is this need to cling to the illusion of certainty, while science continues to increase the uncertainty in the world by posing ever more complex problems, that is at the core of the recent resurgence of psychofraud and the moral dilemma that threatens to destroy the human race. By choosing science as a means of predicting and controlling its physical environment, humanity, without knowing it, opened a Pandora's Box of ever new problems which are created by the very success of physical science.

With considerable effort, mankind managed to extend science to biology in the nineteenth century. Reflect on the opposition to Darwin's theory and its modern variants in all countries. The extension of science to biology in the nineteenth century was done at the cost of man's image of himself as a specially created being for whom a good and merciful god has special concern. Darwin's theory of evolution and its modern extensions, which show man evolving not only from apelike creatures, but from elementary matter through random occurrences, have destroyed any rational person's view of man as a special object of divine creation. The knowledge that the earth is less than a mote of dust in a virtually limitless universe and that man is entirely on his own in it without any guarantees from anyone has opened an abyss before humanity into which few wish to look.

 

The Abyss

The abyss results from the knowledge that we may have evolved, not according to some divine plan, but through a series of random accidents which led to the survival of the strong at the price of the extinction of the weak (96). It is not the meek that have inherited the earth, but the most bloodthirsty predatory animal in history — man. No other animal has ever systematically slaughtered its own kind in countless millions for the sheer pleasure it brings. No other animal has brought so many thousands of species to extinction or near extinction. No other animal has ever threatened to destroy all life on earth.

To look into the abyss is to see ourselves as we are. To see ourselves as we are is to look at the face of death in a seemingly purposeless and indifferent universe. Most men seek to avoid this confrontation and thus blind themselves with psychofraud. However, it is only by confronting the reality of what and why we are that we can overcome our fears and begin to cope with ourselves as effectively as we have with the physical and biological environments. It is the purpose of Ethical Therapy to cure us of this self-imposed blindness.

 

Blindness

Since the end of World War II, man has lived under a Damoclean sword of nuclear annihilation. Annihilation became a popular topic of public discourse for presidents, statesmen and ordinary men. It was a recurrent theme in popular fiction, films and theater. No less than 2000 works of fiction pertaining to nuclear annihilation have been published since the end of World War II. Yet today this subject is virtually ignored by both public and private men. It is no longer a topic for any fiction that sells. Why is this?

A cynic would say that the market became glutted by apocalyptic writings and speeches. Nuclear annihilation simply does not sell any more. An optimist would say that we now have a more stable balance of power and nuclear annihilation is not nearly the threat that it was in the early 1960s. A realist would note the following.

There is greater danger of nuclear annihilation today than there ever was. Until the early 1960s, only the United States had the capacity to totally destroy its enemies. Today both the United States and the Soviets have the capacity to destroy the entire human race several times over. Furthermore, these weapon systems are becoming increasingly destructive and automated. The men controlling them, if anything, are more venal and ignorant than those who controlled them in the past (50). The so-called balance of power merely makes the situation more unstable because there no longer is any single power with the capacity to absolutely impose its will on the other. Furthermore, this instability is increasing as new nations — China, France, Israel, Japan, India — acquire nuclear capability. The weapons grow in destructiveness and proliferate even as the capacity of our political leaders to deal with the situation diminishes. This is not stability, but increasing instability. The avoidance of the issue is not due to the fact that it does not exist or that it is no longer relevant, but rather to the fact that it is a fearsome subject with which we seem to have lost the capacity to cope. The Freudians would call this issue-avoidance "repression."

The repression of the knowledge of the obvious danger from nuclear annihilation seems to have begun shortly after the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. At this time, the world came so close to actual nuclear war that it seemed to produce a type of psychic shock which could only be overcome by self-imposed blindness. Although some major films on the nuclear annihilation theme, such as Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove, were made after this period, the number of original writings on the theme began to diminish. The unconscious expression of anxiety through art is the last to be suppressed. Dr. Strangelove put an end to the whole affair by treating this very serious matter as a comedy. It is a common defense mechanism to laugh and joke at situations with which we can no longer cope. By the beginning of the 1970s, nuclear annihilation was simply no longer a subject that could be discussed on any level with the vast majority of people. Mankind had totally repressed its fears of nuclear annihilation. The problem was simply ignored. This was self-imposed blindness to reality (50). It was psychofraud.

A danger similar in scope to nuclear annihilation, but not quite as imminent, is that of pollution. Although films about nuclear annihilation are no longer popular, films about ecological disaster are still being made, e.g., The Omega Man, Silent Running, and Soylent Green. After deep concern was expressed with the ecological crises in the late sixties, the public began to lose conscious concern with it as soon as the magnitude of the problem became clear. The unconscious concern remained in art forms as in the case of films, but eventually even this will disappear as in the case of nuclear annihilation. There seemed no way of adequately coping with the problem through existing bureaucratic systems. It was clear that if we did not cope with it, the situation could become irreversible. Eventually, we would not be able to avoid annihilation by pollution even with our best efforts (50). Therefore, the reality of this danger began to be suppressed by psychofraud just as nuclear danger had been suppressed.

The psychofraud in this case was that man could avoid ecological disaster by returning to a simple, prescientific, pastoral existence and by rejecting science and technology. This view, of course, ignores the fact that the world could not support its present population without the aid of science and technology and that the destruction of our technological civilization would lead to mass starvation and worse conditions. See The Greening of America by Charles Reich as an example of this type of psychofraud. The same phenomena is occurring in all the danger areas confronting humanity — ranging from genetic decay through the elimination of natural selection among the human species, to the significance of massive drug addiction and growing hedonism among young persons. When men cannot cope with an important problem, they blind themselves to it through psychofraud.

 

Varieties of Psychofraud

Psychofraud occurs whenever a person cannot face up to his own ignorance and impotence. It is psychologically more comforting to believe that one understands than to know that one does not know. It is more comforting to imagine a world in which we can predict and control than to live in a world in which we cannot cope with reality. Depending on the vigor of his imagined fantasies, a person is classified either as a neurotic or a psychotic. A well-known psychiatrist once related the following parable of the neuroses-psychoses dimension: "Neurotics build castles in the sky, psychotics live in them, and psychotherapists collect rent from both."

Here we see the full dimension of psychofraud from comforting illusions to complete and often disastrous distortions of reality. Reality includes both that which we can predict and control and that which we cannot predict and control. So long as we can predict and control our own thoughts, we can escape from having to confront the world outside our thoughts. By creating fantasies we can predict and control our own thoughts. If we are not imaginative enough to create our own fantasies, for a price someone else will create them for us. They will help us build the imaginary castles, live in them, and then collect rent from us. This "helper" may be a psychiatrist, a priest or a political ideologue. We accept their guidance because the thoughts they engender are much more satisfactory than those engendered by reality or our own fantasies.

It is the innate need to predict and control which drives us toward both greater knowledge and self-delusion. However, illusions cannot be maintained indefinitely. Reality will eventually overtake us, if not as individuals, then as a species. The moral choice is either to face reality with all its concomitant horror and loneliness or to find happiness in temporary illusion. The only way we know what is real is by scientifically testing our theories to see if in fact they truly enable us to predict and control. It is not our belief in our abilities to predict and control that counts, but whether in fact we actually do predict and control.

The mystic has complete confidence in his knowledge, i.e., his ability to predict and control the world around him, without ever having subjected this belief to a test. It is his inner conviction, his personal enlightenment, that counts. Therefore, most mystics concentrate on predicting and controlling their own thoughts, for only in the mind can fantasies find complete insulation from reality. If the mystic can discipline his mind to ignore the fact that he lives in filth, that his children and brothers are dying of disease, and that the beautiful thoughts that he creates will all die with his body, then the mystic has reached the true Nirvana. Entire civilizations have been built on this belief in mystical enlightenment.

We need only walk through the streets of Calcutta covered with the excrement of the deformed, dying or already dead bodies which line the sidewalks, to see the logical conclusion of the mystical approach to truth. Half the world has turned toward mysticism. It lives in contentment among its own decay, kept alive by the food, medicine and technology produced by the nations with a scientific culture. The youth of the United States and other affluent democracies, confronted with the horror of their own existence, have come to envy the contentment of the mystical degenerates and are beginning to emulate them. But it is a prosperous, technological civilization which makes it possible for them to temporarily avoid reality.

In the communist countries, on the other hand, the mystical approach to life is severely repressed. Here the psychofraud is political, not mystical. It consists in the belief that man is nothing more than organized matter and that the founders and current leaders of the communist society have scientifically learned how to predict and control human evolution. The fact that communist theory has made very poor predictions of historical events in the twentieth century is ignored and suppressed whenever possible. Any critic of the system is killed, imprisoned or driven insane in political asylums (176). The whole society is structured to avoid the unpleasant fact that there is more to reality than is explained by communist ideology. The whole society seems to become insane, and the sane are put in asylums. All of humanity's social creations seem to end up as means for maintaining illusions of certainty.

In the industrialized Western democracies, the greatest uncertainties plaguing the population are uncertainties about their own emotions and mental processes. Having largely eliminated the uncertainties of infectious diseases, inadequate shelter and poor diet, together with the uncertainties of being subject to the whims of capricious tyrants, the people in the progressive democracies have become obsessed with their own psyches. Having used science and technology to cope effectively with the physical and biological environments, the people have become obsessed with the uncertainties of the psychosocial environment. Because the basic physical and biological problems have been solved, attention is focused on emotional problems and the psychosocial environment. Instead of extending the scientific method to this new aspect of the environment, the population succumbs to psychofraud (43, 48, 83, 106).

We succumb to psychofraud because mysticism, psychotherapy and the social sciences give us immediate answers on how to cope with the psychosocial environment. The facts that these "answers" (1) have not been subject to experimental verification and (2) are not based on scientifically developed data are ignored in a desperate attempt to make sense out of a miserable life in a disintegrating society. The easy promises of certainty offered by psychofraud eventually overcome any lingering skepticism.

The need for certainty is the fatal flaw in human nature. This is what must be overcome through Ethical Therapy. Humanity must learn to cope with the insecurity of "uncertainty." It must learn to see itself in a perspective of awesome cosmic reality. It must learn to live with doubt and danger in an infinite universe whose nature can never be fully understood. Humanity must progress without knowing toward what it is progressing. If not, it will destroy itself by self-imposed blindness to the dangers which it itself creates. Whether our species is capable of making this ethical transformation is itself uncertain.

 

The Choice

The choice before each person is simple yet profound. Will I live to increase happiness or truth? Happiness and truth are not mutually exclusive, but neither are they identical. The importance is in which one of these two states we choose as our goal for making decisions. Psychofraud can make persons happy and relieve anxiety, but it cannot increase truth. Increasing truth can cause unhappiness for anyone who is a practitioner or a victim of psychofraud. However, it is only when we seek truth for its own sake that we can be truly happy (50).

We cannot learn when we are certain. Only those who doubt learn. Yet doubt itself makes most persons unhappy. However, this is only the case when happiness is seen as the ultimate goal of existence. When truth for its own sake is our final goal, then we are always happy. That this is the case can be shown logically and experimentally (50). However, victims of psychofraud will not surrender their illusions to reason. They will do everything in their power to avoid any scientific evidence that will cause doubt and end the security of certainty. They will seek to avoid the responsibility that they have for their evolution and that of their fellowman. This emotional need for psychofraud and all encompassing ideologies is what must be overcome. The choice before everyone is whether to accept or reject psychofraud. The choice is whether to be happy in our illusions or to grow in objective truth.

The institutions most concerned with helping persons overcome psychofraud are themselves the worst victims of psychofraud. This applies to our schools and universities (50), but most of all to the psychotherapeutic community. Today the psychotherapists are the main practitioners of psychofraud as well as its worst victims.