Pop psychology has worked its way into our culture. If a man makes a mistake, its OK to blame it on something he ate or an addiction he has. Has pop psychology made it so people no longer have to accept responsibility for their own actions? Is pop psychology making us a society of victims?
A defense attorney once asked me how to use the “alcohol blackout” argument. His client had bludgeoned a relative to death. (Dozens of blows to the head with a hammer tends to be deadly.) He knew he could not get her off, but perhaps he could get her a reduced sentence by claiming alcohol blackout. I told him it might work if he had an expert witness who was incompetent or willing to fabricate. He would also need a judge who was naïve about alcoholism and alcoholic blackouts.
A man killed a homosexual who made a pass at him in San Francisco. The argument was that his violence was “an involuntary triggering of sexual attitudes induced in him by his sheltered, small-town Texas upbringing.” Fortunately for all of us, the judge did not buy the “panic” defense.
However, a body builder did avoid jail time by using the anabolic steroid defense after he broke into six homes, stole money and set fire to three of the homes. He was ruled in a Maryland court not criminally responsible because his use of anabolic steroids left him “suffering from organic personality syndrome.”
After a chief judge Sol Wachtler was arrested for extortion and threatening to kidnap his ex lover’s teenage daughter, his defense was “a prescription drug cocktail and manic depression made him do it.” A prominent medical psychologist wrote that the judge “was manifesting advanced symptoms of…Clerambault-Kandinsky Syndrome (CKS)…a devastating illness.” Translation: irresistibly lovesick and therefore blameless.
I invite you to join me in reflecting on what the medicalizing and psychologizing of bad behaviour into bad diseases is doing to societal values. To hold no one responsible is to make us all victims.
Pop psychology has been a willing participant in the evasion of moral values. We now have chocolate addiction as an excuse for gorging on chocolate, caffeine addiction as an excuse for road rage, love addiction as an excuse for staying in a dangerous relationship and gambling addiction to excuse gambling excesses. And isn’t the whole point of being a sex addict to justify aberrant sexual behaviour and feel less guilty about it?
Kevin Mitnick was accused of hacking into a corporate computer system and stealing a valuable security program. The judge saw him as a victim of “computer addiction” and sent him for treatment for his impulse disorder. Mitnick later established Mitnick Security Consulting, L.L.C. and had a movie, “Track Down,” made about him.
The alcohol-made-me-do-it argument is still alive and well. Last month, 24-year-old Ronald King received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to sexual intercourse with a child under 10. (She was four.) The judge told Mr. King during sentencing that drinking “leads you astray and makes you do terrible things.”
What happened to the bad people? Has pop psychology made them all ill and therefore not responsible?
A functioning alcoholic develops a serious heart condition and is told that continuing to drink will kill him, so he stops drinking to save his life. Thousands have done it. We laud him for his choice. However, if the same man chooses to drink and drive, and then kills someone, people are quick to conclude that the alcohol, not the man, was at fault.
Do you agree with me there is something wrong with this picture?
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maintains an active practice on
Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. He focuses on healthy relationships and life after addictions. He is the author of Living with a Functioning Alcoholic — A Woman's Survival Guide.
www.NeillNeill.com
