April 28, 2025 • 33 mins
Unearthing Psychology's Shadow: A Critical Examination
In this episode of PsyberSpace, host Leslie Poston digs into the dark history of psychology, exploring its entanglements with colonialism, racism, sexism, and eugenics. The episode sheds light on how psychological theories and practices have upheld oppressive systems and sometimes caused harm. Poston emphasizes the importance of acknowledging these historical abuses to build a more ethical, inclusive, and just field. The episode also addresses how contemporary issues in psychology continue to reflect these historical biases, and how current scholars and practitioners are working to transform the discipline.
00:00 Introduction to the Shadow Side of Psychology
02:12 The Dark Roots of Modern Psychology
03:41 Eugenics and Its Devastating Impact
05:31 The Legacy of Intelligence Testing
09:11 Gender and Sexuality in Early Psychology
13:34 Institutional Failures and Ethical Breaches
20:01 Psychology in the Service of Profit and Control
27:41 Towards a More Ethical and Inclusive Psychology
31:15 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
Research
American Psychological Association. (2021, October). Apology to people of color for APA's role in promoting, perpetuating, and failing to challenge racism, racial discrimination, and human hierarchy in U.S.
American Psychological Association. (2021, October). Historical chronology: Examining psychology's contributions to the belief in racial hierarchy and perpetuation of inequality for people of color in U.S.
American Psychological Association. (2021, October). Role of psychology and the American Psychological Association in dismantling systemic racism against people of color in the United States.
Bakan, D. (1966). Behaviorism and American urbanization. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 2(1), 5-28.
Bank, A. (1996). Of 'native skulls' and 'noble caucasians': Phrenology in colonial South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 22(3), 387-403.
Benjamin, L. T., & Baker, D. B. (2009). Recapturing a context for psychology: The role of history. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(1), 97–98.
Benschop, R., & Draaisma, D. (2000). In pursuit of precision: The calibration of minds and machines in late nineteenth-century psychology. Annals of Science, 57(1), 1-25.
Collins, A. F. (1999). The enduring appeal of physiognomy: Physical appearance as a sign of temperament, character, and intelligence. History of Psychology, 2(4), 251-276.
Coon, D. J. (1993). Standardizing the subject: Experimental psychologists, introspection, and the quest for a technoscientific ideal. Technology and Culture, 34(4), 757-783.
Crowther-Heyck, H. (1999). George A. Miller, language, and the computer metaphor and mind. History of Psychology, 2(1), 37-64.
Danziger, K. (1980). The history of introspection reconsidered. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 16(3), 241-262.
Fass, P. (1980). The IQ: A cultural and historical framework. American Journal of Education, 88(4), 431-458.
Galton, F. (1904). Eugenics: Its definition, scope, and aims. The American Journal of Sociology, 10(1), 1-24.
Gergen, K. J. (2001). Psychological science in a postmodern context. American Psychologist, 56(10), 803-813.
Guthrie, R. V. (2004). Even the rat was white: A historical view of psychology (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.
Harris, B. (2016). Therapeutic work and mental illness in America, c. 1830–1970. In W. Ernst (Ed.), Work, psychiatry and society, c. 1750–2015 (pp. 55-76). Manchester University Press.
Herek, G. M. (2010). Sexual orientation differences as deficits: Science and stigma in the history of American psychology. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(6), 693-699.
Hornstein, G. A. (1992). The return of the repressed: Psychology's problematic relations with psychoanaly
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Leslie Poston (00:11):
Welcome to PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. This week, we'retalking about the shadow side of
psychology, its complicated andsometimes disturbing history.
Psychology as a field oftenpresents itself as a neutral
science that is objective, datadriven, and concerned only with
(00:32):
helping people live betterlives. And a lot of the time,
that's true.
But like any tool shaped byhuman hands, psychology has also
been misused. It has servedpower as much as it has served
people. Today's episode isn'tabout tearing down the entire
discipline that I love so much.It's about facing the parts of
(00:53):
its past that are hard to lookat. Because only by doing that
can we build something moreethical, inclusive, and just.
We're tracing the roots ofmodern psychology back through
some uncomfortable territory: colonialism, racism, sexism, (01:05):
undefined
eugenics, and the rolepsychology played in upholding
oppressive systems. We'll alsolook at the present because
history doesn't stay in the pastif we haven't reckoned with it.
The history of psychology isn'ta simple march of progress. It's
(01:26):
a messy, contradictory storywith moments of genuine insight
alongside these terrible abusesof power. By examining this
history critically, we canbetter understand the field's
present challenges and imaginemore humane futures for
psychological practice.
Before we get too far into theepisode today, I want to give a
(01:48):
shout out and a thank you toDoctor. Conjeet Page and Doctor.
Tunisia Singleton, both womenwho were absolute inspirations
to me during my educationaljourney and who pointed me
towards this history that weneed to reckon with. Without
their influence, I don't think Iwould have spent as much time
thinking about the ways thatpsychology can be better. Let's
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start at the roots.
Before psychology became aformal science, it was entangled
with some deeply flawed ideasposing as objective truth. Think
phrenology, the so calledscience of skull shapes, and
physiognomy, which claimed youcould read someone's character
or intelligence from theirfacial features. These weren't
(02:35):
just weird Victoriancuriosities. They were tools
used to justify racialhierarchies, colonial conquest,
and slavery. Franz Josef Gall'sphrenology wasn't just neutral
curiosity.
It gave people in power apseudoscientific rationale for
why they deserved to dominateothers. Gall claimed that you
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could determine a person's moraland intellectual characteristics
by examining the bumps on theirskull. This pseudoscience
quickly became a way to provethe supposed superiority of
European men over both women andnon white populations. These
ideas were exported andweaponized. In colonial South
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Africa, Phrenology was used toclassify and control indigenous
populations, backed by theveneer of Western science.
Colonial authorities collectedand measured Indigenous skulls,
using those measurements tojustify policies of segregation
and exploitation. And thiswasn't fringe. This was
mainstream at the time. And thencame Eugenics. Francis Galton, a
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cousin of Charles Darwin,believed that selective breeding
could improve the human race.
He coined the term eugenics in1883, launching a movement that
would have devastatingconsequences. Galton's work laid
the groundwork for policies likeforced sterilization and
immigration bans, and not justin Nazi Germany, but in The
(04:06):
United States, Canada, andbeyond. In The United States
alone, over 60,000 people wereforcibly sterilized under
eugenic laws, with the last suchsterilization occurring as
recently as 1981 in Oregon.These victims were
disproportionately poor, Black,Indigenous, disabled, or
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otherwise marginalized.Psychology's earliest
practitioners often supportedand legitimized these practices.
Eugenics was psychology's firstmassive failure to protect the
people it studied. It confusedsocial bias for biological
truth. It prioritized anabstract vision of human
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improvement over the basicrights and dignity of actual
humans, and it did so with thefull authority of scientific
expertise. Even though we nowreject these pseudosciences,
echoes of them still ripplethrough psychological research
and institutions. The beliefthat intelligence is largely
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heritable and fixed, thatcertain traits cluster by race
or by gender, that human valuecan be quantified or ranked.
These notions persist in moresubtle forms. Acknowledging this
history isn't about guilt, it'sabout honesty and creating
better practices moving forward.IQ tests may seem like a neutral
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measurement tool today, but theyhave a deeply political origin
story. In the early twentiethcentury, intelligence testing
was less about understandingcognition and more about sorting
people into hierarchiesdetermining who should be
allowed to immigrate, who shouldbe allowed to reproduce, who
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should be institutionalized.Consider Alfred Binet, who
developed the first widely usedintelligence test in 1905.
His intention was actually quitehumane, to identify children who
needed educational support. Butwhen his test crossed the
Atlantic, it was transformedinto something far more
insidious. Americanpsychologists like Henry
(06:18):
Goddard, Lewis Terman, RobertYerkes adapted Binet's work to
support their eugenic beliefs.The U. S.
Military embraced intelligencetesting during World War I,
administering tests to over1,750,000 men. But what got
measured and how reflectedcultural and racial biases much
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more than any true notion ofintelligence. These tests
required familiarity withAmerican culture and the English
language, automaticallydisadvantaging immigrants and
those with limited educationalopportunities. The results were
predictable but presented asscientific fact. Southern and
Eastern European immigrantsscored lower than Northern
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Europeans, Black Americansscored lower than White
Americans.
And these scores helpeddetermine who got promoted or
who even went to the frontlines. And these bled into
civilian policy. IQ tests wereused to justify eugenics based
laws and discriminatoryimmigration quotas. The
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Immigration Act of 1924, whichseverely restricted immigration
from Southern And EasternEurope, Asia, and Africa, was
explicitly supported bypsychological evidence of the
supposed inferior intelligenceof these groups. Psychologists
testified before Congress,lending scientific credibility
(07:42):
to deeply racist policies.
Researchers like Guthrie havedocumented how these tests often
reflected what white, upperclass Americans valued and
penalized those from otherbackgrounds. Questions required
knowledge of tennis, polo atYale, hardly universal cultural
reference points. The messagewas clear: intelligence wasn't
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something to nurture it wassomething to control and use to
justify existing socialhierarchies. We can see this
specter raising its head againtoday. And this control didn't
stop at borders or institutions.
It found its way into schools,employment, and even prisons.
The myth of the fixed innate IQbecame a convenient way to
(08:30):
uphold social hierarchies andstill influences educational
policy and psychologicalpractice today, albeit in more
subtle ways than in the past.And even now, we see
standardized testing used tosort children into educational
tracks that often reinforceexisting advantages and
disadvantages. The language ofaptitude and ability can mask
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the social forces that shape whosucceeds and who struggles.
Intelligence testing isn'tinherently harmful, but its
history reminds us to askcritical questions about who
defines intelligence and to whatend.
If you were a woman in the latenineteenth or early twentieth
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century, psychology wasn'tnecessarily on your side. Many
early psychological theoriestreated women as emotionally
unstable, intellectuallyinferior, or biologically
destined for domesticity.Hysteria, a now debunked
diagnosis, was essentially acatchall label for women who
(09:36):
resisted those roles. The fieldoften reinforced patriarchal
views rather than challengingthem. Women who sought
education, independence, orpolitical rights were frequently
pathologized.
Their resistance to oppressivesocial norms was framed as
mental illness rather thanlegitimate discontent. Take
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Sigmund Freud, arguably the mostinfluential figure in early
psychology. While his workcontained revolutionary
insights, his views on womenwere deeply problematic. He
described women as having lesssense of justice than men and
famously wondered, what does awoman want as if female desire
was fundamentallyincomprehensible? His theory of
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penis envy suggested thatwomen's psychological
development was essentially aresponse to their anatomical
inferiority.
G. Stanley Hall, the firstpresident of the American
Psychological Association,argued that higher education
could damage women'sreproductive systems. Edward
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Clark, a Harvard professor,claimed that women's brains
couldn't handle the strain ofcollege education without
diverting energy from theirreproductive organs resulting in
infertility or nervous collapse.We laugh now, but these weren't
fringe ideas. They formed themainstream of psychological
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thought about gender fordecades, and they had severe
consequences.
They were used to exclude womenfrom higher education,
professional careers, andpolitical participation. They
shaped how women's mental healthwas understood and treated. And
when it came to LGBTQ plusidentities, the story was even
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worse. Until disturbinglyrecently, homosexuality was
classified as a mental disorder.Psychological treatments
included conversion therapy,aversion therapy, and
institutionalization.
Many queer people sufferedtremendously under these
supposedly therapeuticinterventions. Homosexuality
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wasn't removed from theDiagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, orthe DSM, until 1973, and even
then, only after sustainedactivist pressure. Gender
identity variants remainedpathologized as gender identity
disorder until 2013, when it wasfinally reclassified as gender
(12:12):
dysphoria Still a diagnosis, butwith a shifted emphasis from
identity to distress. Even intothe 2000s, studies often treated
sexual and gender differences asdeficits, as things to be
corrected or pathologized,rather than valid human
variations. Herrick's work showshow deeply ingrained those
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assumptions were in mainstreamresearch and how they
contributed to stigma anddiscrimination against LGBTQ
plus individuals.
Feminist psychologists likeJanet Shibley Hyde and Sandra
Bem started pushing back,challenging the idea that male
experience was the default andeverything else a deviation.
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Carol Gilligan criticized howtheories of moral development
were based entirely on studiesof boys and men, then applied to
everyone. But the path toinclusive, affirming
psychological research has beenslow, and frankly, we're still
on it. Many biases remainembedded in how we conceptualize
mental health and well-being.The history of psychology's
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engagement with gender andsexuality reminds us how
scientific authority can be usedto naturalize social prejudices
and how important it is toquestion whose perspectives
shape psychological knowledge.
It's not just individualpsychologists who went astray.
Institutions failed, too. TheAmerican Psychological
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Association, the largestprofessional body in the field,
has a long history ofcomplicity. They were slow to
denounce segregation, slow toaddress racism, and in some
cases they outright supporteddiscriminatory policies. In
2021, the APA finally issued aformal apology for promoting
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racism through their research,practices, and policies.
It acknowledged theorganization's role in
promoting, perpetuating, andfailing to challenge racism,
racial discrimination, and humanhierarchy in The United States.
This was a significant momentbut long overdue, and it only
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came after years of evidencethat psychologists had not only
failed to stop harm but hadactively participated in it. The
APA's apology specificallymentioned the organization's
failure to speak out against theinternment of Japanese Americans
during World War II, its supportfor segregated education prior
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to Brown v. Board of Education,and its silence in the face of
racist immigration policies.Perhaps the most chilling
example of institutional failurewas psychologists helping design
and implement torture programsduring the post nineeleven War
on Terror.
Psychologists James Mitchell andBruce Jessen designed the CIA's
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enhanced interrogation program,drawing on psychological
research about learnedhelplessness to create
techniques designed to breakdetainees. These were rogue
individuals they were operatingwith institutional knowledge and
protection. The APA's ethicsguidelines proved insufficient
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to prevent this profoundviolation of human rights. A
twenty fifteen independentinvestigation found that APA
officials had collaborated withthe Department of Defense to
ensure that the association'sethics policies would not
constrain interrogationactivities. The organization had
effectively colluded with thegovernment to enable
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psychologists' participation intorture.
These are breaches of ethics somassive, they force us to ask,
Who is psychology reallyserving? The people or the
systems in power? How do weensure that psychological
knowledge is used to heal ratherthan harm? These questions
remain urgent today aspsychology continues to evolve
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and intersect with politics,technology, and culture. The
Stanford Prison Experiment, oneof the most famous psychological
studies ever conducted, raisedserious ethical concerns about
the treatment of participants.
The Tuskegee Syphilis study,while primarily medical,
involved psychologicalmanipulation to keep
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participants enrolled withoutinformed consent. These
institutional failures matterbecause they shape what kinds of
psychological knowledge getproduced, valued and applied.
They influence who enters thefield and whose perspectives
guide its development.Addressing them requires not
just better ethics guidelines,but fundamental changes in how
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psychological institutionsoperate and who they serve.
Psychology doesn't exist in avacuum.
It's shaped by the culture itgrows in, and that culture has
often been patriarchal, whitedominated, and capitalist. That
shows up in how we definewellness and illness, how we
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conceptualize normal behavior,and what we consider worthy of
study. Take depression in women.Instead of asking what societal
structures might becontributing, such as poverty,
discrimination, or violence,psychologists have historically
medicalized the symptoms. Theproblem wasn't the system it was
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the woman's brain chemistry.
This approach individualizessuffering rather than
recognizing the social origins.Women are diagnosed with
depression at roughly twice therate of men. Is this because
women are inherently more proneto depression, or is it because
women face specific socialstressors like gender based
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violence, wage discrimination,and the double burden of paid
and unpaid labor? Or perhapsit's because men's depression
often manifests in ways thatdon't fit diagnostic criteria
like anger or substance abuse.These questions challenge us to
think about how gender normsshape both experience and
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diagnosis.
And in the workplace, psychologywas enlisted to make people more
productive, not necessarily morefulfilled. The rise of
industrial organizationalpsychology coincided with a
shift towards optimizing workersfor efficiency, often at the
expense of well-being. Workerswho couldn't adapt to
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increasingly demandingconditions are deemed the
problem, not the conditionsthemselves. Frederick Winslow
Taylor's Scientific ManagementPrinciples, developed in the
early twentieth century, usedpsychological techniques to
maximize worker productivity.Time and motion studies broke
jobs down into their smallestcomponents, establishing one
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best way to perform each task.
Workers became interchangeableparts in the machine of
production. Their subjectiveexperiences became largely
irrelevant. Modern managementpsychology often continues this
tradition in more subtle ways.Corporate wellness programs
focus on making employees moreresilient to stress rather than
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reducing workplace stressors.Mindfulness is co opted as a way
to help workers tolerate toxicconditions rather than change
them.
The language of psychology,words like grit, resilience,
emotional intelligence, becomesa way to shift responsibility
from organizations toindividuals. Consumer psychology
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has been used to manipulate, notjust understand, behavior.
Marketing tactics based onpsychological principles
deliberately exploit cognitivebiases to increase consumption,
regardless of whether thatconsumption benefits the
individual or society.Advertisers use psychological
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research on attachment,identity, and social belonging
to create artificial needs andinsecurities that can only be
resolved through purchasingproducts. Feminist psychologists
and postmodern critics have longcalled this out.
They argue that the field'sfocus on the individual, on
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mindset, on personal resiliencelets institutions off the hook.
If you're burned out, it's yourlack of grit, not the toxic work
environment. If you'restruggling financially, it's
your poor choices, not systemicinequality. Psychologist David
Smale coined the term magicalvolunteerism to describe the
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false belief that people canovercome their problems through
sheer force of will, regardlessof their social circumstances.
This belief, he argued, servesthose in power by obscuring the
real social causes of distressand placing responsibility on
those with the least resourcesto change their situations.
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We need a psychology that looksat the system, not just the
self. One that recognizes howsocial conditions shape our
minds and behavior and thatisn't afraid to advocate for
structural changes whennecessary, and this means
challenging the very foundationsof how we think about mental
health and well-being. A trulyliberatory psychology would
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acknowledge that many so calledmental health problems are
actually completely saneresponses to insane social
conditions. It would recognizethat psychological healing often
requires social justice, and itwould use its authority to
advocate for the social changesneeded to support genuine
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well-being for all people, notjust those who can afford
therapy or who fit within narrowdefinitions of normal or able.
The past isn't the past.
Some of the same dangerous ideasare alive and well, just dressed
in new language. Eugenics, forexample, has resurfaced in the
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pseudo debate over autism,disability, and prenatal
screening. Figures like R. F. K.
Jr. Have floated ideas thatharken back to the worst
chapters of eugenics thinking,framing neurodivergence as a
public threat rather than anatural human variation. In
fact, just this month in 2025,Kennedy suggested creating a
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national registry of autisticchildren, eerily reminiscent of
historical registries used totarget marginalized groups in
the past. While presented as apublic health measure, such
proposals rest on the assumptionthat certain types of people are
problems to be tracked, managed,and ultimately eliminated the
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core logic of eugenics.Similarly, prenatal testing for
conditions like Down syndromehas led to extremely high
termination rates when thecondition is detected and
disclosed.
While individual reproductivechoices should be respected, the
aggregate pattern raises sometroubling questions about which
lives we deem worth living andwhich difference society is
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willing to accommodate. Theseapproaches often prioritize the
comfort of neurotypical peopleover the autonomy and well-being
of neurodivergent individuals.They frame difference as deficit
rather than diversity and seekto eliminate rather than to
accommodate. Autism treatment,like applied behavior analysis,
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or ABA, have been legitimatelycriticized by many autistic self
advocates as attempting to trainautistic people to appear
neurotypical rather than helpingthem thrive just as they are.
There's also the pharmaceuticalindustry's grip on diagnosis and
treatment.
Conditions are often framed tofit what drugs can fix, not
(24:22):
necessarily what people need.Diagnostic categories shift with
market trends, and financialconflicts of interest permeate
research funding andprofessional education. Consider
how the Psychiatry's DiagnosticBible expanded the criteria for
attention deficit hyperactivitydisorder, or ADHD, in ways that
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dramatically increased the poolof potential patients for
stimulant medications, or howantidepressant trials with
negative results often gounpublished, creating a
distorted picture of thesedrones' effectiveness.
Pharmaceutical companiesroutinely fund educational
events for psychologists andpsychiatrists, subtly shaping
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how practitioners think aboutmental health conditions and
their treatment. Digitalpsychology presents new ethical
challenges.
Behavioral economics and nudgetheory have been used to
manipulate choices in everythingfrom health care to social
media. Designers usepsychological tricks to keep us
scrolling, not because it's goodfor us, but because it's good
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for business. Our attention andour behavior are monetized,
often without our informedconsent. Social media platforms
employ armies of psychologistsand behavioral scientists to
maximize engagement, a euphemismfor addiction. Features like
infinite scroll, variable rewardschedules, like those used in
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slot machines, and socialvalidation feedback loops are
deliberately designed tooverride our self regulation.
These are the same psychologicalprinciples once used to design
cigarettes for maximumaddictiveness now applied to our
digital lives. And in an era ofbig data and algorithmic
decision making, psychologicalprofiling can reinforce existing
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inequalities. Predictive modelstrained on biased data
perpetuate those biases, whetherin hiring, criminal justice, or
health care. The veneer ofscientific objectivity masks
deeply subjective valuejudgments about what constitutes
normal or desirable behavior.Facial recognition systems claim
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to detect emotions or evencriminal tendencies,
resurrecting thepseudoscientific physiognomy of
the nineteenth century indigital form.
HR analytics systems purport toidentify ideal employees based
on psychological profilesderived from current high
performers, potentiallyreinforcing existing patterns of
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discrimination. Thesetechnologies operationalize
psychological concepts withoutadequate scientific validation
or ethical oversight. And that'snot neutral. That's psychology
in the service of profit andcontrol. And it requires
vigilance from bothpractitioners and the public to
recognize and resist.
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We need to ask who benefits fromparticular psychological
technologies and whose valuesthey encode. We need to
challenge the assumption thatmore behavioral data and more
sophisticated modelsautomatically lead to better
outcomes for actual humans. Sowhere do we go from here? There
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are psychologists pushing forchange: feminist psychologists,
critical race theorists,Indigenous scholars, and
disability activists. They'reworking to reshape the field
from the inside, challenging itsassumptions and expanding its
perspectives.
We're seeing more honestreckoning with the past. The APA
apology was one step. So was therising popularity of decolonial,
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community based, and liberatorypsychological frameworks. These
approaches center theexperiences of marginalized
communities and recognize therole of systemic oppression in
mental health. Indigenouspsychologists like Joseph
Gaughan and Eduardo Doran havedeveloped healing approaches
that integrate traditionalcultural practices with
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contemporary psychologicalknowledge.
Black psychologists likeJennifer Eberhardt and Beverly
Daniel Tatum have illuminatedhow racism shapes cognition and
development, challengingpsychology to address these
realities. Feministpsychologists like Laura Brown
have reimagined trauma treatmentto account for the specific
impacts of gender based violenceand discrimination. These
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perspectives aren't just addingdiversity to psychology they're
fundamentally transforming howwe understand the mind,
behavior, and healing. They'reshifting from individualistic
models toward more relational,contextual understandings of the
human experience. Pickron talksabout liberating history, not
erasing it, but using it to freepsychology from the patterns
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that limit it.
By understanding howpsychological concepts emerged
from specific cultural andpolitical contexts, we can
question their universality andimagine alternatives. We can ask
what a psychology not steeped inWestern individualism,
capitalism, and colonialismmight look like. Psychologists
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of color and others on themargins are helping move the
field towards something that'smore ethical, more communal, and
more responsive to livedexperience. They're developing
culturally responsive therapiesthat honor diverse healing
traditions rather than imposingWestern models. They're
challenging the field toacknowledge how social forces
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shape mental health and toadvocate for justice as a
component of well-being.
And this isn't just about newideas. It's about new values.
It's about prioritizing justicealongside well-being,
recognizing the politicaldimensions of psychological
practice, and ensuring thatpsychology serves all people,
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not just those with power. It'sabout psychologists embracing
their responsibility as socialactors whose work has real
consequences for how weunderstand ourselves and each
other. It's also about humility,acknowledging that psychological
knowledge is always partial,always situated in specific
cultural contexts, and alwaysevolving.
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This humility makes room formultiple ways of understanding
human experience, includingthose that Western psychology
has historically dismissed. Andit's about democratizing
psychology, making its insightsaccessible to communities rather
than hoarding them asprofessional expertise.
Community psychology,participatory action research,
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and peer support movements allseek to distribute psychological
knowledge and skills morewidely, empowering people to
address their own mental healthneeds in context. This shadow
side of psychology isn't just ahistorical curiosity. It's a
living challenge.
A call to create somethingbetter. By facing it honestly,
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we can build a psychology thattruly serves human flourishing
in all of its diverse forms. Wecan learn from past failures and
create more ethical, inclusive,and liberatory practices for the
future. This means remainingvigilant against new forms of
psychological control andmanipulation. It means
questioning whose interests areserved by certain psychological
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theories and techniques.
And it means actively working torepair the harms that psychology
has caused to marginalizedcommunities. The story of
psychology isn't over. It'sstill being written by
practitioners and researchers,by activists, by communities, by
all of us who engage withpsychological ideas in our daily
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lives. By understanding thisdark side, we can help write a
better next chapter, one thatuses psychological insights to
heal rather than harm, toliberate rather than control,
and to celebrate human diversityrather than to pathologize
difference. As always, wheneverI mention specific researchers
in my episodes, their researchis going to be included in the
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show notes.
Additionally, whenever I mentionspecific treatments or
modalities of treatments, suchas ABA therapy or certain drugs
prescribed for ADHD in thisepisode, I like to add a little
commentary. Things that areaddictive to neurotypical
people, like stimulants, are notaddictive to ADHD people and
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should not be pathologized assuch. If your medication is
helping you, be it a stimulant,an antidepressant, anything, an
SSRI, whatever you're taking.Please don't stop just because
society doesn't understand it.Work with your doctor to get the
care that you need.
And if you are undergoing ABAtherapy and it's working for
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you, while that's rare, pleasecontinue. But if you found it's
not working, you might want toconsider alternative therapies,
perhaps somatic therapy orsomething similar that might
help you be more in tune withyourself and with the
environment around you. Therapyis not a one size fits all
(33:34):
solution. Thanks for listeningto PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston, signing off.
As always, and until next time,stay curious.
Welcome to PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston. This week, we'retalking about the shadow side of
psychology, its complicated andsometimes disturbing history.
Psychology as a field oftenpresents itself as a neutral
science that is objective, datadriven, and concerned only with
(00:32):
helping people live betterlives. And a lot of the time,
that's true.
But like any tool shaped byhuman hands, psychology has also
been misused. It has servedpower as much as it has served
people. Today's episode isn'tabout tearing down the entire
discipline that I love so much.It's about facing the parts of
(00:53):
its past that are hard to lookat. Because only by doing that
can we build something moreethical, inclusive, and just.
We're tracing the roots ofmodern psychology back through
some uncomfortable territory: colonialism, racism, sexism, (01:05):
undefined
eugenics, and the rolepsychology played in upholding
oppressive systems. We'll alsolook at the present because
history doesn't stay in the pastif we haven't reckoned with it.
The history of psychology isn'ta simple march of progress. It's
(01:26):
a messy, contradictory storywith moments of genuine insight
alongside these terrible abusesof power. By examining this
history critically, we canbetter understand the field's
present challenges and imaginemore humane futures for
psychological practice.
Before we get too far into theepisode today, I want to give a
(01:48):
shout out and a thank you toDoctor. Conjeet Page and Doctor.
Tunisia Singleton, both womenwho were absolute inspirations
to me during my educationaljourney and who pointed me
towards this history that weneed to reckon with. Without
their influence, I don't think Iwould have spent as much time
thinking about the ways thatpsychology can be better. Let's
(02:13):
start at the roots.
Before psychology became aformal science, it was entangled
with some deeply flawed ideasposing as objective truth. Think
phrenology, the so calledscience of skull shapes, and
physiognomy, which claimed youcould read someone's character
or intelligence from theirfacial features. These weren't
(02:35):
just weird Victoriancuriosities. They were tools
used to justify racialhierarchies, colonial conquest,
and slavery. Franz Josef Gall'sphrenology wasn't just neutral
curiosity.
It gave people in power apseudoscientific rationale for
why they deserved to dominateothers. Gall claimed that you
(02:57):
could determine a person's moraland intellectual characteristics
by examining the bumps on theirskull. This pseudoscience
quickly became a way to provethe supposed superiority of
European men over both women andnon white populations. These
ideas were exported andweaponized. In colonial South
(03:19):
Africa, Phrenology was used toclassify and control indigenous
populations, backed by theveneer of Western science.
Colonial authorities collectedand measured Indigenous skulls,
using those measurements tojustify policies of segregation
and exploitation. And thiswasn't fringe. This was
mainstream at the time. And thencame Eugenics. Francis Galton, a
(03:44):
cousin of Charles Darwin,believed that selective breeding
could improve the human race.
He coined the term eugenics in1883, launching a movement that
would have devastatingconsequences. Galton's work laid
the groundwork for policies likeforced sterilization and
immigration bans, and not justin Nazi Germany, but in The
(04:06):
United States, Canada, andbeyond. In The United States
alone, over 60,000 people wereforcibly sterilized under
eugenic laws, with the last suchsterilization occurring as
recently as 1981 in Oregon.These victims were
disproportionately poor, Black,Indigenous, disabled, or
(04:28):
otherwise marginalized.Psychology's earliest
practitioners often supportedand legitimized these practices.
Eugenics was psychology's firstmassive failure to protect the
people it studied. It confusedsocial bias for biological
truth. It prioritized anabstract vision of human
(04:48):
improvement over the basicrights and dignity of actual
humans, and it did so with thefull authority of scientific
expertise. Even though we nowreject these pseudosciences,
echoes of them still ripplethrough psychological research
and institutions. The beliefthat intelligence is largely
(05:09):
heritable and fixed, thatcertain traits cluster by race
or by gender, that human valuecan be quantified or ranked.
These notions persist in moresubtle forms. Acknowledging this
history isn't about guilt, it'sabout honesty and creating
better practices moving forward.IQ tests may seem like a neutral
(05:35):
measurement tool today, but theyhave a deeply political origin
story. In the early twentiethcentury, intelligence testing
was less about understandingcognition and more about sorting
people into hierarchiesdetermining who should be
allowed to immigrate, who shouldbe allowed to reproduce, who
(05:56):
should be institutionalized.Consider Alfred Binet, who
developed the first widely usedintelligence test in 1905.
His intention was actually quitehumane, to identify children who
needed educational support. Butwhen his test crossed the
Atlantic, it was transformedinto something far more
insidious. Americanpsychologists like Henry
(06:18):
Goddard, Lewis Terman, RobertYerkes adapted Binet's work to
support their eugenic beliefs.The U. S.
Military embraced intelligencetesting during World War I,
administering tests to over1,750,000 men. But what got
measured and how reflectedcultural and racial biases much
(06:40):
more than any true notion ofintelligence. These tests
required familiarity withAmerican culture and the English
language, automaticallydisadvantaging immigrants and
those with limited educationalopportunities. The results were
predictable but presented asscientific fact. Southern and
Eastern European immigrantsscored lower than Northern
(07:01):
Europeans, Black Americansscored lower than White
Americans.
And these scores helpeddetermine who got promoted or
who even went to the frontlines. And these bled into
civilian policy. IQ tests wereused to justify eugenics based
laws and discriminatoryimmigration quotas. The
(07:21):
Immigration Act of 1924, whichseverely restricted immigration
from Southern And EasternEurope, Asia, and Africa, was
explicitly supported bypsychological evidence of the
supposed inferior intelligenceof these groups. Psychologists
testified before Congress,lending scientific credibility
(07:42):
to deeply racist policies.
Researchers like Guthrie havedocumented how these tests often
reflected what white, upperclass Americans valued and
penalized those from otherbackgrounds. Questions required
knowledge of tennis, polo atYale, hardly universal cultural
reference points. The messagewas clear: intelligence wasn't
(08:06):
something to nurture it wassomething to control and use to
justify existing socialhierarchies. We can see this
specter raising its head againtoday. And this control didn't
stop at borders or institutions.
It found its way into schools,employment, and even prisons.
The myth of the fixed innate IQbecame a convenient way to
(08:30):
uphold social hierarchies andstill influences educational
policy and psychologicalpractice today, albeit in more
subtle ways than in the past.And even now, we see
standardized testing used tosort children into educational
tracks that often reinforceexisting advantages and
disadvantages. The language ofaptitude and ability can mask
(08:54):
the social forces that shape whosucceeds and who struggles.
Intelligence testing isn'tinherently harmful, but its
history reminds us to askcritical questions about who
defines intelligence and to whatend.
If you were a woman in the latenineteenth or early twentieth
(09:15):
century, psychology wasn'tnecessarily on your side. Many
early psychological theoriestreated women as emotionally
unstable, intellectuallyinferior, or biologically
destined for domesticity.Hysteria, a now debunked
diagnosis, was essentially acatchall label for women who
(09:36):
resisted those roles. The fieldoften reinforced patriarchal
views rather than challengingthem. Women who sought
education, independence, orpolitical rights were frequently
pathologized.
Their resistance to oppressivesocial norms was framed as
mental illness rather thanlegitimate discontent. Take
(09:58):
Sigmund Freud, arguably the mostinfluential figure in early
psychology. While his workcontained revolutionary
insights, his views on womenwere deeply problematic. He
described women as having lesssense of justice than men and
famously wondered, what does awoman want as if female desire
was fundamentallyincomprehensible? His theory of
(10:21):
penis envy suggested thatwomen's psychological
development was essentially aresponse to their anatomical
inferiority.
G. Stanley Hall, the firstpresident of the American
Psychological Association,argued that higher education
could damage women'sreproductive systems. Edward
(10:43):
Clark, a Harvard professor,claimed that women's brains
couldn't handle the strain ofcollege education without
diverting energy from theirreproductive organs resulting in
infertility or nervous collapse.We laugh now, but these weren't
fringe ideas. They formed themainstream of psychological
(11:03):
thought about gender fordecades, and they had severe
consequences.
They were used to exclude womenfrom higher education,
professional careers, andpolitical participation. They
shaped how women's mental healthwas understood and treated. And
when it came to LGBTQ plusidentities, the story was even
(11:24):
worse. Until disturbinglyrecently, homosexuality was
classified as a mental disorder.Psychological treatments
included conversion therapy,aversion therapy, and
institutionalization.
Many queer people sufferedtremendously under these
supposedly therapeuticinterventions. Homosexuality
(11:48):
wasn't removed from theDiagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders, orthe DSM, until 1973, and even
then, only after sustainedactivist pressure. Gender
identity variants remainedpathologized as gender identity
disorder until 2013, when it wasfinally reclassified as gender
(12:12):
dysphoria Still a diagnosis, butwith a shifted emphasis from
identity to distress. Even intothe 2000s, studies often treated
sexual and gender differences asdeficits, as things to be
corrected or pathologized,rather than valid human
variations. Herrick's work showshow deeply ingrained those
(12:34):
assumptions were in mainstreamresearch and how they
contributed to stigma anddiscrimination against LGBTQ
plus individuals.
Feminist psychologists likeJanet Shibley Hyde and Sandra
Bem started pushing back,challenging the idea that male
experience was the default andeverything else a deviation.
(12:55):
Carol Gilligan criticized howtheories of moral development
were based entirely on studiesof boys and men, then applied to
everyone. But the path toinclusive, affirming
psychological research has beenslow, and frankly, we're still
on it. Many biases remainembedded in how we conceptualize
mental health and well-being.The history of psychology's
(13:19):
engagement with gender andsexuality reminds us how
scientific authority can be usedto naturalize social prejudices
and how important it is toquestion whose perspectives
shape psychological knowledge.
It's not just individualpsychologists who went astray.
Institutions failed, too. TheAmerican Psychological
(13:41):
Association, the largestprofessional body in the field,
has a long history ofcomplicity. They were slow to
denounce segregation, slow toaddress racism, and in some
cases they outright supporteddiscriminatory policies. In
2021, the APA finally issued aformal apology for promoting
(14:03):
racism through their research,practices, and policies.
It acknowledged theorganization's role in
promoting, perpetuating, andfailing to challenge racism,
racial discrimination, and humanhierarchy in The United States.
This was a significant momentbut long overdue, and it only
(14:24):
came after years of evidencethat psychologists had not only
failed to stop harm but hadactively participated in it. The
APA's apology specificallymentioned the organization's
failure to speak out against theinternment of Japanese Americans
during World War II, its supportfor segregated education prior
(14:45):
to Brown v. Board of Education,and its silence in the face of
racist immigration policies.Perhaps the most chilling
example of institutional failurewas psychologists helping design
and implement torture programsduring the post nineeleven War
on Terror.
Psychologists James Mitchell andBruce Jessen designed the CIA's
(15:09):
enhanced interrogation program,drawing on psychological
research about learnedhelplessness to create
techniques designed to breakdetainees. These were rogue
individuals they were operatingwith institutional knowledge and
protection. The APA's ethicsguidelines proved insufficient
(15:30):
to prevent this profoundviolation of human rights. A
twenty fifteen independentinvestigation found that APA
officials had collaborated withthe Department of Defense to
ensure that the association'sethics policies would not
constrain interrogationactivities. The organization had
effectively colluded with thegovernment to enable
(15:52):
psychologists' participation intorture.
These are breaches of ethics somassive, they force us to ask,
Who is psychology reallyserving? The people or the
systems in power? How do weensure that psychological
knowledge is used to heal ratherthan harm? These questions
remain urgent today aspsychology continues to evolve
(16:16):
and intersect with politics,technology, and culture. The
Stanford Prison Experiment, oneof the most famous psychological
studies ever conducted, raisedserious ethical concerns about
the treatment of participants.
The Tuskegee Syphilis study,while primarily medical,
involved psychologicalmanipulation to keep
(16:38):
participants enrolled withoutinformed consent. These
institutional failures matterbecause they shape what kinds of
psychological knowledge getproduced, valued and applied.
They influence who enters thefield and whose perspectives
guide its development.Addressing them requires not
just better ethics guidelines,but fundamental changes in how
(17:01):
psychological institutionsoperate and who they serve.
Psychology doesn't exist in avacuum.
It's shaped by the culture itgrows in, and that culture has
often been patriarchal, whitedominated, and capitalist. That
shows up in how we definewellness and illness, how we
(17:22):
conceptualize normal behavior,and what we consider worthy of
study. Take depression in women.Instead of asking what societal
structures might becontributing, such as poverty,
discrimination, or violence,psychologists have historically
medicalized the symptoms. Theproblem wasn't the system it was
(17:46):
the woman's brain chemistry.
This approach individualizessuffering rather than
recognizing the social origins.Women are diagnosed with
depression at roughly twice therate of men. Is this because
women are inherently more proneto depression, or is it because
women face specific socialstressors like gender based
(18:08):
violence, wage discrimination,and the double burden of paid
and unpaid labor? Or perhapsit's because men's depression
often manifests in ways thatdon't fit diagnostic criteria
like anger or substance abuse.These questions challenge us to
think about how gender normsshape both experience and
(18:29):
diagnosis.
And in the workplace, psychologywas enlisted to make people more
productive, not necessarily morefulfilled. The rise of
industrial organizationalpsychology coincided with a
shift towards optimizing workersfor efficiency, often at the
expense of well-being. Workerswho couldn't adapt to
(18:50):
increasingly demandingconditions are deemed the
problem, not the conditionsthemselves. Frederick Winslow
Taylor's Scientific ManagementPrinciples, developed in the
early twentieth century, usedpsychological techniques to
maximize worker productivity.Time and motion studies broke
jobs down into their smallestcomponents, establishing one
(19:14):
best way to perform each task.
Workers became interchangeableparts in the machine of
production. Their subjectiveexperiences became largely
irrelevant. Modern managementpsychology often continues this
tradition in more subtle ways.Corporate wellness programs
focus on making employees moreresilient to stress rather than
(19:38):
reducing workplace stressors.Mindfulness is co opted as a way
to help workers tolerate toxicconditions rather than change
them.
The language of psychology,words like grit, resilience,
emotional intelligence, becomesa way to shift responsibility
from organizations toindividuals. Consumer psychology
(20:02):
has been used to manipulate, notjust understand, behavior.
Marketing tactics based onpsychological principles
deliberately exploit cognitivebiases to increase consumption,
regardless of whether thatconsumption benefits the
individual or society.Advertisers use psychological
(20:22):
research on attachment,identity, and social belonging
to create artificial needs andinsecurities that can only be
resolved through purchasingproducts. Feminist psychologists
and postmodern critics have longcalled this out.
They argue that the field'sfocus on the individual, on
(20:43):
mindset, on personal resiliencelets institutions off the hook.
If you're burned out, it's yourlack of grit, not the toxic work
environment. If you'restruggling financially, it's
your poor choices, not systemicinequality. Psychologist David
Smale coined the term magicalvolunteerism to describe the
(21:05):
false belief that people canovercome their problems through
sheer force of will, regardlessof their social circumstances.
This belief, he argued, servesthose in power by obscuring the
real social causes of distressand placing responsibility on
those with the least resourcesto change their situations.
(21:25):
We need a psychology that looksat the system, not just the
self. One that recognizes howsocial conditions shape our
minds and behavior and thatisn't afraid to advocate for
structural changes whennecessary, and this means
challenging the very foundationsof how we think about mental
health and well-being. A trulyliberatory psychology would
(21:47):
acknowledge that many so calledmental health problems are
actually completely saneresponses to insane social
conditions. It would recognizethat psychological healing often
requires social justice, and itwould use its authority to
advocate for the social changesneeded to support genuine
(22:07):
well-being for all people, notjust those who can afford
therapy or who fit within narrowdefinitions of normal or able.
The past isn't the past.
Some of the same dangerous ideasare alive and well, just dressed
in new language. Eugenics, forexample, has resurfaced in the
(22:31):
pseudo debate over autism,disability, and prenatal
screening. Figures like R. F. K.
Jr. Have floated ideas thatharken back to the worst
chapters of eugenics thinking,framing neurodivergence as a
public threat rather than anatural human variation. In
fact, just this month in 2025,Kennedy suggested creating a
(22:54):
national registry of autisticchildren, eerily reminiscent of
historical registries used totarget marginalized groups in
the past. While presented as apublic health measure, such
proposals rest on the assumptionthat certain types of people are
problems to be tracked, managed,and ultimately eliminated the
(23:14):
core logic of eugenics.Similarly, prenatal testing for
conditions like Down syndromehas led to extremely high
termination rates when thecondition is detected and
disclosed.
While individual reproductivechoices should be respected, the
aggregate pattern raises sometroubling questions about which
lives we deem worth living andwhich difference society is
(23:37):
willing to accommodate. Theseapproaches often prioritize the
comfort of neurotypical peopleover the autonomy and well-being
of neurodivergent individuals.They frame difference as deficit
rather than diversity and seekto eliminate rather than to
accommodate. Autism treatment,like applied behavior analysis,
(23:59):
or ABA, have been legitimatelycriticized by many autistic self
advocates as attempting to trainautistic people to appear
neurotypical rather than helpingthem thrive just as they are.
There's also the pharmaceuticalindustry's grip on diagnosis and
treatment.
Conditions are often framed tofit what drugs can fix, not
(24:22):
necessarily what people need.Diagnostic categories shift with
market trends, and financialconflicts of interest permeate
research funding andprofessional education. Consider
how the Psychiatry's DiagnosticBible expanded the criteria for
attention deficit hyperactivitydisorder, or ADHD, in ways that
(24:46):
dramatically increased the poolof potential patients for
stimulant medications, or howantidepressant trials with
negative results often gounpublished, creating a
distorted picture of thesedrones' effectiveness.
Pharmaceutical companiesroutinely fund educational
events for psychologists andpsychiatrists, subtly shaping
(25:08):
how practitioners think aboutmental health conditions and
their treatment. Digitalpsychology presents new ethical
challenges.
Behavioral economics and nudgetheory have been used to
manipulate choices in everythingfrom health care to social
media. Designers usepsychological tricks to keep us
scrolling, not because it's goodfor us, but because it's good
(25:30):
for business. Our attention andour behavior are monetized,
often without our informedconsent. Social media platforms
employ armies of psychologistsand behavioral scientists to
maximize engagement, a euphemismfor addiction. Features like
infinite scroll, variable rewardschedules, like those used in
(25:51):
slot machines, and socialvalidation feedback loops are
deliberately designed tooverride our self regulation.
These are the same psychologicalprinciples once used to design
cigarettes for maximumaddictiveness now applied to our
digital lives. And in an era ofbig data and algorithmic
decision making, psychologicalprofiling can reinforce existing
(26:14):
inequalities. Predictive modelstrained on biased data
perpetuate those biases, whetherin hiring, criminal justice, or
health care. The veneer ofscientific objectivity masks
deeply subjective valuejudgments about what constitutes
normal or desirable behavior.Facial recognition systems claim
(26:35):
to detect emotions or evencriminal tendencies,
resurrecting thepseudoscientific physiognomy of
the nineteenth century indigital form.
HR analytics systems purport toidentify ideal employees based
on psychological profilesderived from current high
performers, potentiallyreinforcing existing patterns of
(26:58):
discrimination. Thesetechnologies operationalize
psychological concepts withoutadequate scientific validation
or ethical oversight. And that'snot neutral. That's psychology
in the service of profit andcontrol. And it requires
vigilance from bothpractitioners and the public to
recognize and resist.
(27:20):
We need to ask who benefits fromparticular psychological
technologies and whose valuesthey encode. We need to
challenge the assumption thatmore behavioral data and more
sophisticated modelsautomatically lead to better
outcomes for actual humans. Sowhere do we go from here? There
(27:41):
are psychologists pushing forchange: feminist psychologists,
critical race theorists,Indigenous scholars, and
disability activists. They'reworking to reshape the field
from the inside, challenging itsassumptions and expanding its
perspectives.
We're seeing more honestreckoning with the past. The APA
apology was one step. So was therising popularity of decolonial,
(28:06):
community based, and liberatorypsychological frameworks. These
approaches center theexperiences of marginalized
communities and recognize therole of systemic oppression in
mental health. Indigenouspsychologists like Joseph
Gaughan and Eduardo Doran havedeveloped healing approaches
that integrate traditionalcultural practices with
(28:28):
contemporary psychologicalknowledge.
Black psychologists likeJennifer Eberhardt and Beverly
Daniel Tatum have illuminatedhow racism shapes cognition and
development, challengingpsychology to address these
realities. Feministpsychologists like Laura Brown
have reimagined trauma treatmentto account for the specific
impacts of gender based violenceand discrimination. These
(28:52):
perspectives aren't just addingdiversity to psychology they're
fundamentally transforming howwe understand the mind,
behavior, and healing. They'reshifting from individualistic
models toward more relational,contextual understandings of the
human experience. Pickron talksabout liberating history, not
erasing it, but using it to freepsychology from the patterns
(29:15):
that limit it.
By understanding howpsychological concepts emerged
from specific cultural andpolitical contexts, we can
question their universality andimagine alternatives. We can ask
what a psychology not steeped inWestern individualism,
capitalism, and colonialismmight look like. Psychologists
(29:36):
of color and others on themargins are helping move the
field towards something that'smore ethical, more communal, and
more responsive to livedexperience. They're developing
culturally responsive therapiesthat honor diverse healing
traditions rather than imposingWestern models. They're
challenging the field toacknowledge how social forces
(29:57):
shape mental health and toadvocate for justice as a
component of well-being.
And this isn't just about newideas. It's about new values.
It's about prioritizing justicealongside well-being,
recognizing the politicaldimensions of psychological
practice, and ensuring thatpsychology serves all people,
(30:18):
not just those with power. It'sabout psychologists embracing
their responsibility as socialactors whose work has real
consequences for how weunderstand ourselves and each
other. It's also about humility,acknowledging that psychological
knowledge is always partial,always situated in specific
cultural contexts, and alwaysevolving.
(30:42):
This humility makes room formultiple ways of understanding
human experience, includingthose that Western psychology
has historically dismissed. Andit's about democratizing
psychology, making its insightsaccessible to communities rather
than hoarding them asprofessional expertise.
Community psychology,participatory action research,
(31:04):
and peer support movements allseek to distribute psychological
knowledge and skills morewidely, empowering people to
address their own mental healthneeds in context. This shadow
side of psychology isn't just ahistorical curiosity. It's a
living challenge.
A call to create somethingbetter. By facing it honestly,
(31:27):
we can build a psychology thattruly serves human flourishing
in all of its diverse forms. Wecan learn from past failures and
create more ethical, inclusive,and liberatory practices for the
future. This means remainingvigilant against new forms of
psychological control andmanipulation. It means
questioning whose interests areserved by certain psychological
(31:49):
theories and techniques.
And it means actively working torepair the harms that psychology
has caused to marginalizedcommunities. The story of
psychology isn't over. It'sstill being written by
practitioners and researchers,by activists, by communities, by
all of us who engage withpsychological ideas in our daily
(32:09):
lives. By understanding thisdark side, we can help write a
better next chapter, one thatuses psychological insights to
heal rather than harm, toliberate rather than control,
and to celebrate human diversityrather than to pathologize
difference. As always, wheneverI mention specific researchers
in my episodes, their researchis going to be included in the
(32:31):
show notes.
Additionally, whenever I mentionspecific treatments or
modalities of treatments, suchas ABA therapy or certain drugs
prescribed for ADHD in thisepisode, I like to add a little
commentary. Things that areaddictive to neurotypical
people, like stimulants, are notaddictive to ADHD people and
(32:52):
should not be pathologized assuch. If your medication is
helping you, be it a stimulant,an antidepressant, anything, an
SSRI, whatever you're taking.Please don't stop just because
society doesn't understand it.Work with your doctor to get the
care that you need.
And if you are undergoing ABAtherapy and it's working for
(33:14):
you, while that's rare, pleasecontinue. But if you found it's
not working, you might want toconsider alternative therapies,
perhaps somatic therapy orsomething similar that might
help you be more in tune withyourself and with the
environment around you. Therapyis not a one size fits all
(33:34):
solution. Thanks for listeningto PsyberSpace. I'm your host,
Leslie Poston, signing off.
As always, and until next time,stay curious.
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