Question: You confuse me. You seem to be very much opposed to psychology yet you quote some psychologists favorably and seem to rely upon the research that psychologists supply. | thebereancall.org

TBC Staff

Question: You confuse me. You seem to be very much opposed to psychology yet you quote some psychologists favorably and seem to rely upon the research that psychologists supply.

Response: You may be confused because you have missed some of what we have said in the extensive writings we have done on psychotherapy. We have stated that the American Psychological Association (APA) has more than 50 distinct divisions of psychology, of which only a few are scientific or lend themselves to the scrutiny of science. As an undergraduate in college, I majored in industrial design and used the research provided by psychology as it related to perception, signing, and ergonomics (man-machine interface).

The psychology we address critically in our ministry is psychotherapy (psychological counseling, clinical psychology), which is clearly not scientific. We often quote research psychologists and psychiatrists who supply studies demonstrating that psychotherapy is not scientific. There is a great gulf between those who do research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy and the practitioners, who generally disregard the research.

We could certainly address the problems with psychotherapy from only a biblical perspective and establish how contrary to the Scripture it is, but we have found that it is helpful for some Christians when we supply the abundance of evidence against psychological counseling from secular researchers.