Psychofraud and Ethical Therapy

Key Concepts

CERTAINTY - A state of mind in which no doubt exists about some cause-and-effect relationships. It is unethical to be certain about anything except the existence of our own thoughts and perceptions, which are not cause-and-effect relationships. The need for certainty may be the fatal flaw in human nature.

CREATIVITY - The ability to organize the total environment — physical, biological and psychosocial — into new patterns which increase the collective ability of all persons to predict and control their total environment. Creativity is a direct function of intelligence and ethics.

EDUCATION - Any process which increases objective truth for any organism; i.e., any process which increases any organism's ability to predict and control by increasing or altering the information content of the organism.

EMOTION - A preprogrammed pattern of behavior, which predisposes an organism to behave aggressively, fearfully, lovingly, or in some combination of these patterns. The basic emotions are inborn and instinctive but can be modified by learning. Feeling, sensitivity, affection and joy are not emotions.

ENVIRONMENT - The total environment has three primary dimensions — the physical, biological and psychosocial. The physical includes all matter, natural laws and their interactions. The biological includes all living organisms. The psychosocial includes all the behavior of all living organisms.

ETHICAL THERAPY - A process for increasing creative intelligence by increasing ethics. The immediate objective is to reorient the ethical perspective of the person so that he uses the criterion of what maximizes objective truth in making every decision and relating to other persons. This process also eliminates neuroses and emotional blockages to creative behavior.

ETHICS - Rules of optimal behavior which simultaneously maximize our ability to achieve all logically consistent goals. It can be shown logically and scientifically that rules of behavior are optimal if and only if they satisfy the criterion of maximizing objective truth.

EVOLUTION - A process which increases the intelligence in the universe. The only common denominator in the evolutionary process is the increasing ability of the biomass to predict and control its total environment. Man is the only species known which can predict and control its own intelligence. This manifests itself in all creative behavior and cultural evolution.

HEALTH - The physical and mental condition conducive to predicting and controlling the total environment. Whatever diminishes our ability to predict and control the total environment diminishes our health. When this occurs through physiological change, such as a broken leg, then it is our physical health that is diminished. When this occurs through a change in the information content of our mind, then it is mental health that has been diminished, and we say that the person is neurotic. When it is a combination of deleterious physiological and information changes in the nervous system, the person may become psychotic. The best objective indicator of health is creativity.

IDEOLOGY - Any process or system of beliefs which claims to be able to predict and control some or all aspects of the total environment without showing scientifically that this is in fact the case. Ideologies are based on faith and are emotionally defended against any scientific contradiction.

KNOWLEDGE - Information which enables or increases the ability of an organism to predict and control its total environment; i.e., information which is true and increases intelligence and health. Knowledge cannot exist independently of intelligence. A book contains information. Only an intelligent organism has knowledge.

LOVE - Refers to a type of behavior as well as to an emotion. As an emotion it is a preprogrammed state of mind which predisposes us to behave in such a way as to enhance the welfare of another even at the cost of our own welfare. When welfare is seen as synonymous with happiness, then love is perverse and unethical. When welfare is seen as synonymous with creative intelligence, then love is natural and ethical. Ethical love can exist without emotion, as when a person makes a deliberate rational choice to maximize objective truth as an end in itself and increases the creative intelligence of others as a necessary means toward this end. Emotional love can be ethical in the case of protective nurturing and maternal instincts. Emotional love is easy to pervert as in the case of sadomasochists and in the case of parents who sacrifice objective truth for the happiness of their children.

MIND - The set of all our thoughts and perceptions. Insofar as thoughts and perceptions are predictable and controllable, the mind is conscious. Insofar as thoughts are unpredictable and uncontrollable, the mind is unconscious. We know with certainty only the existence of our own minds. We infer from the behavior of other organisms and our own behavior and minds that other organisms have minds similar to our own insofar as they behave similarly to us. From this inference we can develop a mind model of behavior which can be objectively shown to enable us to predict and control behavior. The mind model is analogous to the model of gravity. We cannot perceive directly the existence of gravity, but it is a model which enables us to predict and control.

MYSTICISM - Any systematic attempt to obtain truth through direct insight independently of scientific evidence and processes. Mystical truth is always of subjective origin. When mystical insights are supported by scientific evidence, then the mystical truth has become objective. There is no conflict between mysticism and science so long as mystical insights are not held to represent a higher reality than objective truth. It is in the nature of mysticism that its adherents tend to substitute subjective truth for objective truth and in the process become practitioners of psychofraud. All the major religions and the traditional ethical and psychotherapeutic systems seem to have a mystical basis. Objective evolutionary ethics and Ethical Therapy have a strictly scientific basis.

NEUROSES - Learned patterns of behavior which decrease a person's ability to predict and control his total environment. Uncontrollable emotionality is not necessarily neurotic unless it has been caused by some learned experience; e.g., persons who are filled with hate for some particular ethnic group are neurotic because it is necessary to learn to hate a whole ethnic group, and this behavior decreases creative intelligence. Because neurotic behavior is learned behavior, it is susceptible to modification by all types of psychofraud as well as Ethical Therapy.

PREDICT AND CONTROL - Refers to the essential property of intelligent organisms by which events are foreseen and made to comply with the organism's needs and desires. The ability to predict cannot exist independently of the ability to control and vice-versa. Although man could predict astronomical events long before he could control them (as in the case of artificial satellites), he could not have predicted any astronomical events if he could not have controlled his observational procedures by controlling his own biological sensors (eyes, ears, etc.) and the creation of amplifiers of his sensors, such as clocks, calendars and telescopes. Any event which is controlled is by definition predicted. Therefore, control is a higher property of intelligence than prediction, although each property is essential to the other. See definitions of Prediction and of Control.

PSYCHOFRAUD - An ideology about human behavior. Any model which purports to predict and control human behavior and cannot be scientifically verified is psychofraud. Examples of psychofraud are found in all religions, political ideologies, and forms of psychotherapy.

PSYCHOTHERAPY - A process for replacing information which decreases a person's ability to predict and control his total environment with information which increases his ability to predict and control his total environment. Psychotherapy is a special type of education and does not necessarily include the use of drugs or surgery, although these techniques can also change behavior and possibly even increase creativity. The best criterion for the success of psychotherapy is an increase in the net creativity of the person. Most of the treatments called psychotherapy seem to consist mainly of psychofraud.

REALITY - That which we can (1) predict and control or (2) know that we can neither predict nor control. Our thoughts and perceptions are always real, but the models we create about what causes our thoughts and perceptions are not. Only that which is true is real. Only models which enable us to predict and control are true.

SCIENCE (Scientific Method) - A process for expanding objective truth. It is based on the notion that all models of cause-and-effect relationships are assumed to be probably false until proven true by controlled experiments. No model is ever assumed to be beyond doubt. It is assumed that every model of cause-and-effect relationships can always be improved.

TRUTH - Refers only to working descriptions and models of events and their relationships. A model of cause-and-effect relationships is true only insofar as it enables us to predict and control. Truth is subjective insofar as we believe that we can predict and control. Truth is objective insofar as we actually do predict and control. Subjective truth or intuition is often the first step in developing objective truth, but until verified it may include many false insights and concepts. Psychofraud can engender subjective truth. Only science engenders objective truth.

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© John David Garcia, 1974, All rights Reserved.