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In the wake of the Trump assassination attempt, I have noticed a number of people attributing the murderous actions of the would-be assassin to mental illness. Sometimes this is done directly, with a description of the shooter as "mentally ill" or "crazy," and sometimes it is done indirectly, with references to the shooter as "sick" or comparisons to the "profile" of "school shooters."
I think that this is a mistake, both in this particular case and in general. Personally, I have come to the view that the fields of psychology and psychiatry are almost entirely incorrect, and sometimes fraudulent. They put a scientific veneer on matters that have little or nothing to do with science. They excuse wicked or deviant behavior as the result of some form of "illness."
I do think that these fields are rooted in a fundamental error, though this is a matter of faith. It seems to me that the fields of psychology and psychiatry deal with the "mind" and deny the existence of the human spirit. In Greek, these fields deal with the "psyche" while denying the existence of the "pneuma." If materialism is correct, then psychology and psychiatry could be built on a solid foundation. If not, however, then these two fields are based on a fundamentally false assumption.
I think that the attraction of this approach is based on a desire to deny the existence of evil.
Hence, Thomas Matthew Crooks, apparently guilty of both the murder of a bystander and the attempted assassination of one of the most significant political figures in the world, is called "mentally ill" or "sick," and therefore absolved of his individual responsibility and guilt.
Interestingly, there is an article in The Spectator by Theodore Dalrymple, written earlier this year but before the assassination attempt, making this point. It is titled, "It's time to eliminate the concept of 'mental health.'" For those who might not know, Dalrymple is the pen name of Anthony Daniels, a British physician and psychiatrist.
Discussion (57)
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Unhealthy thinking due to multiple dynamics (phsychology), chemical emballance (psychiatry) and spiritual wickedness (evil).
Can all take place singularly or combined.
In my opinion a Christian world view is an absolute necessity to navigate the complexity to mental problems.
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When you medicalize behavior, you are deferring responsibility. "It's not my fault!" We see this frequently in the case of so-called addiction: Addiction is not a "disease," it is a choice.
Loved that Dalrymple piece!
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This seems to be the same phenomenon that pro-aborts use. They refuse to see the evil of killing children in the womb and chalk it up to reproductive health or some such BS. If one can do this, one can dismiss the evil of a murderer very easily with some silly excuse.
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I agree.
I think that others refuse to see the evil of killing civilian women and children, and chalk it up to a nation's right to defend itself or some such BS.
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We disagree on this. In my view, a Christian world view is inconsistent with either the psychological or psychiatric explanations.
We are spirits, but we are embodied spirits. I do agree that physiological causes can induce changes in our consciousness, but I think that consciousness is fundamentally spiritual.
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