"Grow or die" is a basic law of nature. Nothing stands still. Everything in the observable universe seems to be evolving or decaying. All known living organisms begin to decay physiologically once they stop growing. For human beings, there is an alternative to physical growth. Human beings can grow mentally all their lives. Furthermore, what they have learned need not die with their bodies, but can continue to exist in their creations and in the knowledge that they engender in others.

Although while we are still quite young our individual bodies may begin to decay irreversibly until we are dead, we can each experience every day of our lives the beauty of creating and of learning new things and teaching them to others. In this way we can grow throughout our lives, and our fellow men can continue to build upon our knowledge and our creations long after we are dead. This is one way in which persons can give meaning and purpose to their existence and achieve a sense of immortality. For this reason many persons are interested in liberating their minds from the shackles of anxiety and other destructive emotions as a means of increasing their creativity.

In an effort to be more creative, persons will undergo many experiences, such as formal education, mystical indoctrination, and psychotherapy. Each of these approaches— and many other alleged means of expanding creativity — have glowing testimonials written about them and disseminated by their adherents. Yet in observing the proselytizers of these various systems of belief, one often gets the impression that their enthusiasm involves a great deal of self-delusion. Their certitude in the efficacy of their methods is almost always subjective and not objectively substantiated. These criticisms apply particularly to the mystical and the psychotherapeutic approaches to mental well-being.

The essence of the mystical approach to truth is that ultimate reality is subjective, not objective. It is our inner conviction, our direct perception of the universe through "satori" or "sanctifying grace" which counts and not whether our alleged perceptions have any meaningful correspondence to the objective world. This approach to truth has held hundreds of millions of persons in thrall for thousands of years. Entire civilizations, such as those of India and Tibet, have been built on a mystical basis. Yet the nations which seem most capable of coping with reality have used another approach, the scientific method, which seems antithetical to mysticism. Science is not based on belief or subjective certainty, but on the proposition that all models of nature are to be held in doubt until experimentally demonstrated. And even then they are to be held only as relatively and tentatively true until a better model comes along. Therefore, if one accepts the scientific method and all its implications, one must reject the notions that there is such a thing as ultimate absolute truth and that we can ever reach it. There are only increasing degrees of truth. Between science and mysticism there is that peculiar creation of modern man called "psychotherapy."

Psychotherapy is not a single coherent ideology, but a multitude of sometimes contradictory beliefs and schools which in one way or another claim that they can predict and control human behavior—particularly aberrant, destructive behavior. Some forms of psychotherapy are extremely objective and appear to have a sound scientific basis, such as those which are derived from the behavioristic school. Other forms of psychotherapy are almost totally mystical, such as those derived from that amorphous mass of doctrine called "humanistic psychology." However, all forms of psychotherapy claim that they can improve human behavior. What constitutes "improvement" is not always clearly specified. From our perspective, we will consider improvement anything which increases human creativity.

We define creativity objectively as the ability to reorganize some aspects of the total environment — physical, biological and psychosocial — into new patterns which increase at least one person's ability to predict and control the total environment and do not necessarily decrease this ability for any other person. This is a rather complex concept which will be elaborated and clarified throughout the book. Some schools of psychotherapy, such as the behaviorists, may deny that they are concerned with creativity or perhaps even that such a thing exists. The behaviorists claim only that they can induce or remove behavioral symptoms which are desirable or undesirable, as the case may be. The humanistic psychologists, however, are in general most concerned with "creativity," even though they may not clearly specify what they mean by it. However, all psychotherapists claim to be able to improve health.

The position that will be taken in this book is that for a human being, health is indivisible from creativity and that a person's creativity is the best objective criterion for his health. Whatever increases creativity is good, and whatever decreases it is bad. From this perspective we will examine the scientific validity of the various schools of psychotherapy to see if their claims are justified. As in most complex fields of human endeavor, there will be no simple answers. We will see that each school of psychotherapy has some value, but that the vast majority of their claims are scientifically untenable and in many cases approach deliberate fraud.

"Psychofraud" is the term applied to all models of human behavior which have no scientific basis. The practitioners of psychofraud may be perfectly decent, well-intentioned persons who sincerely believe that they are helping others through their techniques. These may include witch doctors, ordained priests, and certified psychotherapists.

Many psychotherapists have a very humble view of their profession and admit that they do not really know what they are doing but that they are merely responding to the immediate needs of their patients by offering them a special kind of friendship. They serve as sounding boards and mirrors through which the patient can hopefully perceive himself in a more rational and realistic perspective. These psychotherapists are not practicing psychofraud, but Ethical Therapy.

Any perspective which is real is ethical. The basis of Ethical Therapy lies in the search for what is objectively real and true and not merely for what is subjectively satisfying. In Ethical Therapy, as it will be developed in this book, we present less a medical treatment than a special kind of education which helps each person acquire an ever-growing respect and desire for objective truth. It is an education which teaches each person to see himself in a cosmic, evolutionary perspective, wherein the increase of intelligence, i.e., the ability to predict and control the total environment, is the only common denominator in the evolutionary process. Creativity is a unique means by which the human species begins to get control and direct its own evolution. Ethics, intelligence, and creativity are different, interrelated facets of a single evolutionary process which must be understood if mental health and human progress are to survive.

The ethical component of man is as important in the overall picture as the intellectual. The essential feature in ethics is the value put on objective truth. It is this value which is shown to be absent in the traditional forms of psychotherapy, which are concerned primarily with emotional well-being. It is also absent in behaviorism, which, in spite of its objectivity, makes psychofraudulent claims about human potential and is concerned with predicting and controlling human behavior as an end in itself and not for any ethical purpose.

It will be shown that only an ethical person can be an Ethical Therapist and that an overwhelming number of the psychotherapists are objectively unethical. Still, there are many ethical persons who practice psychotherapy. It is only through them that psychofraud can be eliminated in their profession and that truly effective Ethical Therapy can begin. But the problem of the unethical therapists remains.

Psychofraud cannot be eliminated if its causes and its manifestations are not well understood. The victims of psychofraud are being deceived and exploited by an often unscrupulous group of practitioners. Ironically, the practitioners themselves are the worst victims of psychofraud. It is in an attempt to help ethical psychotherapists correct their errors and save all victims of psychofraud from self-delusion and exploitation that we expose the corruption of the psychotherapeutic community and present an ethical alternative to psychofraud. This is not intended to be an unanswerable refutation of psychofraud, but rather an engenderer of doubt, which will make all persons more critical and scientifically demanding of the psychotherapeutic process. Hopefully, readers will also learn to see psychotherapy from an ethical perspective by seeing examples of the patently unethical practice of psychofraud.

Through examples and case histories it will be shown that psychotherapists often injuriously deceive their patients, themselves, and others. Clearly, not all psychotherapists are deliberately deceitful. But because of the influence which psychotherapists can exert over individual human lives, any unethical psychotherapist is in a position to do enormous harm to innocent persons. Consider the following case.

Early in 1973 a prominent psychiatrist was arrested for the attempted murder of his wife. It was charged that as chief examining psychiatrist of the state parole board he had sought to bribe a prisoner with a parole in exchange for the assassination of his wife. Later in the investigation it was discovered that the psychiatrist himself had twice been committed to mental institutions as a psychotic. He was in fact much more mentally unstable and aberrant in his behavior than most of his patients.

From our point of view, the important issue is not whether the psychiatrist was guilty as charged, but rather how such an obviously unfit person could acquire such an important position—a position which put the life and liberty of thousands of human beings at the mercy of his whims. The question which immediately comes to mind is, Was this an isolated, freak occurrence, or is it part of a larger pattern?

The psychiatric community has by far the highest suicide rate of any occupational group. This is an objective fact which might be indicative of mental instability. According to Dr. Phyllis Chessler (24), the psychotherapeutic community as a whole is sicker than its patients. But far more disturbing is the subjective impression one often gets in dealing on a purely social or business level with many alleged psychotherapists that these are aberrant, seriously disturbed human beings who became psychotherapists in a desperate attempt to get help for themselves. Their current aberrant behavior is an indication that many psychotherapists cannot cure themselves. Therefore, why should we believe that they can help others?

A few years ago a prominent professor of clinical psychology from a major university was arrested for making indecent advances to a police vice squad officer who was being used as a decoy for entrapping homosexuals. The professor claimed that he was merely doing "research" on homosexual behavior and that he had no illegal intent. However, the evidence against him was such that he was convicted. It was easily proved that he was a habitual homosexual, although currently married and a father. However, he was treated with sympathy by his colleagues and merely asked to seek "professional help." He took "medical" leave for a year instead of being fired for "moral turpitude" from his teaching position. He was considered a leading expert in "rehabilitating" persons with aberrant sexual behavior in general and homosexuals in particular.

At issue here is neither whether homosexuality should be considered a disease nor the ethics of interfering with private voluntary behavior and entrapment. The issue is, Do psychotherapists know what they are doing? Do they really know how to treat aberrant behavior? Do they even know what aberrant behavior is?

In the January 19, 1973 issue of Science, Dr. D. L. Rosenhan, a professor of psychology and law at Stanford University, reports on an experiment in which he and seven other normal, healthy professional persons had themselves committed to various mental institutions under the pretext that they were hearing voices (116). Once committed, they behaved normally and rationally, answered all questions truthfully, disclaimed any further symptoms, and tried to convince the authorities that they were sane. Although they were hospitalized for as long as 52 days, none of the staffs at these institutions ever detected them as pseudopatients. Instead, they attempted to pump them full of drugs. A total of 2100 doses of drugs, including powerful tranquilizers, were administered to the pseudopatients during their hospitalization. The pseudopatients were all diagnosed and labeled for life as psychotics. Elaborate psychiatric theories were propounded to explain their normal behavior as being symptomatic of psychosis. Ironically, many of the real patients in these institutions correctly identified the pseudopatients as imposters who were in fact sane. Several patients thought that the pseudopatients were journalists after a story. Clearly, in these cases, certified insane patients were objectively better at making correct diagnoses of persons' psychological states than were the "sane" psychotherapists. As Dr. Rosenhan concludes, "It is clear that we cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals." If psychotherapists cannot do this, what can they do?

Psychotherapists claim that they can help mentally disturbed persons become well. They have developed many elaborate "scientific" theories to explain aberrant behavior. These theories range from the almost universally accepted medical theory of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that insanity was due to excess masturbation, to the extremely influential theories of Freud which related aberrant behavior to "unconscious sexual needs," to the modern behaviorist school, which claims that all human behavior is a result of operant conditioning and can be modified in any way we wish, solely by conditioning. Every one of these theories has deeply influenced millions of human beings, often depriving persons of their freedom and sometimes of their sanity and their lives (152, 153). Theories similarly suspect are currently being used to explain and allegedly control every facet of human behavior, from simple neuroses and anxiety to educational inadequacies and entire sociopolitical processes, e.g., Marxism. These theories have only two things in common: (1) they lack a scientific foundation, however much they may protest their "objectivity"; and (2) they are psychofraud.

Psychofraud is a complex, destructive psychosocial phenomenon to which all human society is prone. What it is, how it occurs, where it is taking us, and how we can overcome it are questions which will be answered. It will also be shown that psychofraud is a process by which human beings corrupt their need to be more fully human, creative and ethical.

Ethics, as they will be discussed in this book, are not mystical, transcendental, existential, or mysterious. Rather, they are scientific, objectively derivable rules of how best to achieve our basic, innate goals. Psychotherapy and ethics are both concerned with human behavior. Psychotherapists often claim to be "value free." However, this is usually a specious claim, since almost all therapists distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior, and this is a value judgment. Although ultimate values cannot be logically derived from scientific facts, science can show what are the necessary consequences of pursuing one set of values versus another. It can also show us when our end goals are mutually exclusive and how we can best (in the mathematical sense of optimal) achieve all our logically self-consistent goals. It will be shown that our basic innate goals are all logically self-consistent. It is our acquired goals which are often self-contradicting. This is the basis of scientific ethics. This is the basis of Ethical Therapy.

Ethical Therapy is the counter to psychofraud. The contrast between Ethical Therapy and psychofraud is the subject of this book, which is a dynamic guide to help each reader fully develop what is best in him and achieve his full, human, creative potential. In so doing, we will direct a most severe criticism at those ideologies which purport to explain, predict and control human behavior in terms of psychofraud. These include some, not all, aspects of traditional religion, classical psychotherapy, behaviorism, humanistic psychology, neomysticism and many of the so-called social sciences. We attack all forms of psychofraud because there is no scientific evidence that the underlying assumptions in these ideologies have any validity in objective reality. Insofar as psychofraud works, it probably works through conditioning, suggestion, self-delusion and emotional catharsis to make persons "happy" but not objectively healthy or more creative. Psychofraud can create a fools’ paradise, but it cannot contribute to human progress.

The self-delusions of psychofraud stem from the common human inability to live with uncertainty and self-doubt. Comforting illusions of certainty may make us happy for a while and bring us emotional well-being, but they do this at the price of diminishing our ethical intelligence. We share all of our emotions with subhuman animals. It is not our emotions which make us uniquely human; it is our ethical intelligence, which cannot grow in the absence of doubt. Therefore, the reader should approach this book in a spirit of skepticism. We will try to demolish the comforting illusions of psychofraud, but we will not replace them with new illusions. Instead, we will try to stimulate the reader to value ethical intelligence more than he values emotional wellbeing. If we succeed in this, then we will also succeed in helping the reader live with doubt. This is Ethical Therapy.

To understand Ethical Therapy is to doubt its validity. To use Ethical Therapy is to continuously demolish and recreate its theoretical basis. Ethical Therapy is based not on methods, but on goals. All the goals of Ethical Therapy are means for achieving the single basic goal of maximizing ethical intelligence.

The meaning and etiology of psychofraud are given in the first part of this book. The meaning and the rationale for Ethical Therapy are given in the second part. Together, both parts are intended to increase ethical intelligence through creative doubt.

In order to be clear and unambiguous, what follows is written in an assertive, positivistic style. The following list of key concepts is included to alert the reader to the importance of the precise interpretation of words which are vulnerable to ambiguity. A more complete glossary is included at the back of the book. Many case histories and examples are used to help the reader get the "human feel" for the problem and to illustrate specific points. However, every description, hypothesis, theory, and statement may be in error. If the reader can accept this statement and still be interested in reading what follows, then he has already begun to rid himself of psychofraud and to use Ethical Therapy.