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from Clinical/Therapeutic Issues
Science and Values:
Some Quotes for Reflection
"Impose ideas? Try to limit freedom of choice? Of course we do, all of us."
--D.O. Hebb, "What Psychology is About," American Psychologist, Feb. 1974.
"Psychological research cannot be conducted in a moral vacuum. Rather,
it is a fundamentally moral enterprise designed to improve human
welfare, which will inevitably tend to promote some ideals over others."
--Blaine J. Fowers, "Psychology as Public Policy: An Illustration of the
Moral Dimensions of Psychology with Marital Research," Journal of
Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, Fall 1993.
"When we are tempted by fantasies of power to try to set the world in
order, we need an occasional dose of scientific humility."
--M. Brewster Smith, Ph.D., "Toward Scientific and Professional
Responsibilty," American Psychologist, Sept. 1954.
"As a discipline, psychology has seldom been noted for being deeply
reflective about its most basic philosophical foundations, or the
conceptual commitments that ensue from such foundations."
--Edwin E. Gantt, Ph.D. "Psychology as a Science? Creative Ways to
Avoid Answering the Question," APA Review of Books, 1999.
"The business of deciding what's normal and what's psychopathology gets
influenced by culture and politics. It's not hard science."
--Alvin Poussaint, M.D. Quoted in Emily Eakin, "Bigotry as Mental
Illness Or Just Another Norm," New York Times, Jan. 15,2000.
"Science is not value free, and...social science...is...entwined with
the values of the society in which...it would operate."
--Theodore R. Vallance, "Social Science and Social Policy: Amoral
Methodology in a Matrix of Values," American Psychologist, Feb. 1972.
"In the absence of lesions, chemical influences, parasites, bacteria,
viruses, or unequivocal genetic or brain anomalies, the decision as to
what constitutes an illness is subject to the interpretation of existing
research, and to personal opinion--i.e., it is a political decision."
--Ray W. Johnson, Ph.D., "American Psychology: The Political Science,"
Collected Papers from the NARTH Annual Conference, July 29, 1995.
"Since psychiatry, as a discipline, has no coherent view of man, it has
no rational basis for argument regarding the conclusions of religion as
to the nature of personality, and the sources of behavior."
--Royden C. Astley, M.D., "The Nature of Conflicts Between Psychiatry
and Religion," Charles Rolo, ed., Psychiatry in American Life, 1963.
"Although many of us wish it were otherwise, the mental health
professions are far from having a robust conceptual model of normal and
abnormal behavior...Attempts to define and differentiate normal and
abnormal behavior have been the subject of intense debate in the
psychological literature for at least 60 years."
--Richard L. Bednar and Scott R. Peterson, Self-Esteem: Paradoxes and
Innovations in Clinical Theory and Practice, American Psychological
Assn., 1995.
"At bottom, we all yearn for an overarching and seamless sense of order
and purpose."
--Daniel X. Freedman, President, the American Psychiatric Association.
Quoted in Jacqueline Swartz, "Psychiatrists Urged to Confront Larger
Issues," APA (American Psychological Association) Monitor, Aug. 1982.
Updated: 8 February 2008
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