I am currently compiling a list of evidence that psychology as it is practiced as opposed to how it is taught is very much tied up with morality.

As opposed to being a discipline purely interested in curing and ameliorating mental illness it seems very interested in the morality of those it treats. This sometimes directly conflicts with its core mission. Sometimes it only indirectly conflicts.

So let me begin. Here is my first example. It’s an article from the BBC.

French test 'chemical castration'

By John Laurenson
Paris

Doctors in France have started giving chemical treatment to 48 repeat sex offenders to see if it will stop them attacking again.

All the men, who have finished prison terms for sex crimes, are volunteers. The government hopes the treatment, which is already available in Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the US will help stem the increase in sex crimes. The number of people sent to prison in France for sex offences has multiplied by seven over the past 20 years.

Now almost a quarter of male detainees in French jails - or 8,200 people - are sex offenders and nearly three-quarters of those have raped children. The statistics are so bad, the government had to do something.

Injections

French Justice Minister, Dominic Perben, told French radio that experimenting with chemical treatment to curb sex crime had never been tried in France before. But he said if it works it could, like psychological treatment, be something sex offenders are forced to undergo in the future.

We'll only really start to make progress against sex crime when we find out what's going on in the heads of different categories of sex offender

Isabelle Le Bourgeois,
psychologist

The minister says injections of the prostate cancer drug leuproreline and the breast cancer tablet cyproterone dampen the sex drive and inhibit erections. The effect wears off when the treatmentstops so this is not "chemical castration" but, to usethe minister's phrase, "a chemical straightjacket". Madelaine Perret, vice-president of the Paris section of the prisoner help organisation Farapej, says she has met a number of sex offenders during her 15 years as a prison visitor and is not surprised that some might volunteer for treatment.

"One prisoner I used to visit said to me 'Madame, you can't imagine the strength of the impulse that some of us men feel to get close to little boys and commit acts that are completely forbidden'.

"He said he was glad to have been arrested and happy to be in prison. Because there were no young boys, there was no temptation and so it was in prison that he felt free.

"He was down for a long sentence but was frightened about offending again when he was finally released.

"He said 'I want treatment! I want them to put a stop to these impulses that push me, in spite of myself, to commit what I know are crimes!'"

Understanding

Some psychologists, though, are worried about the experiment.

The knowledge that chemical treatment exists might make some offenders think they are less responsible for their behaviour, reasoning that if you can take drugs to stop it, the sexual assault of children becomes less a vile act of evil men and more the result of a medical condition.

The psychologist and Catholic prison chaplain, Isabelle Le Bourgeois, has another objection. She says emphasis should be placed on trying to understand and treat the psychological disorder behind paedophile crime.

"It only became an offence a very short time ago as victims dared speak up about the damage it caused them and people woke up to how serious it was," she said.

"And because it's so recent, there hasn't been proper psychological analysis of the mechanisms at work. We'll only really start to make progress against sex crime when we find out what's going on in the heads of different categories of sex offender."

These past few months have seen a series of paedophile rape trials in France. These crimes, related in awful detail, have outraged public opinion and left it eager for action. But there is a malaise. While chemicals might succeed in stopping paedophiles using their bodies to re-offend, nothing is being done to reform the paedophile imprisoned in his mind.

Story from BBC NEWS:

(The italics are mine.)

Now what precisely does the fact that some offenders might ‘think they are less responsible for their behavior, reasoning that if you can take drugs to stop it, the sexual assault of children becomes less a vile act of evil men and more the result of a medical condition’ have any bearing. So bloody what?

Now these reasoning offenders might just be reasoning correctly. Hmmmmm…… my my my…. Maybe as the article details they have an urge so strong that it does not correspond to quite anything that the rest of us might have. Thus they may truly be less responsible? And even if false what does it matter what they might reason? Because, they are unnaturally obsessed with some pursuit of morality. You argue that maybe they are worried about deleterious behavior such an attitude may engender. Well I argue that in part it is just a puritanical moralizing thing. And I intend to present hundreds of sources of evidence to back that up. So stay tuned……

So why did we go to war?

Well nothing changed about Iraq particularly from September 10 2001 to September 11 2001. Sadaam's regime was a secular one. He wasn’t interested in religious fundamentalism. He suppressed it brutally. He was no friend of Bin Laden. So why Iraq? What did it have to do with this new fangled war on terrorism?

The key lies in perceptions. Specifically American perceptions. The world did not change - but many of those in the USA did. Or more specifically those who had long harbored ambitions within the administration to overthrow Sadaam were able to manipulate public opinion.

I fear that we may not be able to discuss these or related events with any significant incite until the perceived threat has passed. This is much like the cold war. So many bellicose utterances occurred during it, that were only seen as absurd after the event. Only once the cold war had ended could real more dispassionate analysis begin. We don't feel threatened by the Soviet Union so its become 'ok' to conceive of things that before would have been considered subversive.

The difficulty may be though that this war is a war without end. One can gage when war ends with a nation state. Ultimately one can occupy it or simply destroy its existence. But this war on terrorism is a war on a concept. It is like declaring war on 'struggle' absurd as that may sound. Unless human beings insist that war against a non state entity is no war at all, we may find ourselves at war for eternity. The definition of terrorism given by the current administration is that of a crime committed against people or property for non economic ends.

So why is the United States so bellicose about such a futile mission? Let me first say that it is difficult to talk about the United States having such a definite mindset. The people living in the territory in the United States are quite broad and diverse. And it sometimes becomes meaningless to talk about them in a collective way. In this instance I talk about a general feeling about much of the popular – ‘the red state people’.

The United States as a concept is relatively new. The collective imaginings of approximately 300 million people that fantasize about some super collective being is relatively new. And during its short duration other than during its war of independence and the war of 1812 it has not been invaded. It has not become accustomed to the concept. It has become - excuse my parlor - like a spoilt child brought up in the lap of luxury that is shocked when it meets an outside world that is so horrifying and terrifying. The child is shocked, its sensibilities are severely shaken and it reacts to things that everyone else is accustomed to with a relatively extreme posture. Such is the case of the United States.

It has never had to deal with terrorism. It hasn’t had its cities bombed as Europe and the Pacific Rim endured during the second world war. It hasn't had to deal with a lot of terrorism until now. It can't tolerate the notion of a non state actor acting against it. There lies the key. The very fact that a non state actor would have the gumption to even consider hostilities is very offensive to it. It can deal with another state actor harboring nefarious wishes against it. But, not a non state actor. Other nations would view both types of threats with sensible alertness but would accept that for both of them - such are the ways of the world.

The Russians, the British, the Chinese, the French and a whole host of other countries have had to deal with terrorism for hundreds of years. (The French even helped to create what we mean in modern times by what we call terrorism.) This is not to say that they have not taken the opportunity to crack down on internal dissent with the excuse of world terrorism. However they have been able to take it in their stride. No paradigm shift had occurred.

This explains how the US population went for war. It does not however explain what the administration was up to. The administration was planning for the invasion of Iraq from the time it took office.