Rejecting both Materialist Psychiatry and Politically Motivated Anti-Psychiatry

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/8/8/trump-and-the-global-rise-of-fascist-anti-psychiatry

This was an utterly frustrating read but it offers some food for thought, and like it or not, this is where things stand. These are the waters we must navigate.

In the modern materialist mindset, psychology has been reduced to behaviouralism and biology with a great deal of mental health treatment involving medications - which requires a psychiatrist. Though there's a debate over methods and the kind of care a psychiatrist can give as opposed to psychological counselor, from my perspective the differences are negligible. Both rely on an understanding of humanity and epistemology that are (I would argue) completely opposed to basic Christian anthropology.

The American Church embraced many of the key components of this larger psychological/psychiatric approach to personhood and mental health back in the 1990's. The cultural shift took place in the 60's and 70's (and always about twenty years behind), the 90's was a period of conflict for the Church and yet it seemed by the end of that decade, the psychology side had won the debate. The work begun by the likes of James Dobson in the 1970's and 80's had borne fruit. Today, it's rare to find churches actively preaching against psychology. Most endorse it, with many outsourcing the task of Christian counseling to 'professionals' - yet another denial of Scriptural Sufficiency from within Evangelicalism. Psychology has shaped approaches to ecclesiology and even a great deal of what passes for sermons and Biblical teaching.

This process was further confused by Christian attempts to re-cast psychology in Christian terms. Jay Adams (1929-2020) offered a more Biblically grounded approach to counseling, but not a few argue that his legacy has been subsequently hijacked and distorted.

For my part, I believe the collapse in mental health is judgment on this culture and a result of its decadence. Like Rome and other empires, the period of decadence arrives in connection with great power, wealth, and leisure and this leads to an inward and introspective turn resulting in self-obsession, hedonism and thus self-destruction.

Combine this with stress over lifestyle expectations, a marketing culture that breeds unhappiness, and a culture given to covetousness - the end result is society that is unhappy and unhinged.

Rather than calling people to repentance, psychiatry tries to help people deal with their guilt and their anxiety by other means... focusing on thought processes, environment, biology, relationship dynamics, and so forth. There is a tendency to downplay guilt and fixate on personal character traits and struggles. It is a far cry from repentance and mortification. Often it is the opposite, turning to forms of affirmation. And again, this approach is now deeply rooted in American Christianity and is reflected in Christian pop songs on the radio. Obviously I don't expect the world to embrace Christian ways of thinking about fallen man's status in the world and the corruption of sin - indeed they cannot. However, the ever-accommodating and acculturated Church has failed to take a stand.

As I continue to argue - if any church takes a strong stand on feminism, divorce, and psychology (what I call the Accommodationist Triad) they will quickly find their pews empty. These things are givens in our culture - they're not up for debate. And yet as Christians we need to take a stand and decry these tendencies, behaviours, and ways of thinking. Our battle isn't with the culture - they're in Satan's grip and nothing can be done with them or for them apart from the gospel. Sadly, the struggle is within the Church and with the myriad false teachers, many of whom are respected, rich, and highly visible.

Instead, the Evangelical movement has simply (and repeatedly) moved the goalposts. They have compromised on every one of these issues but because their position is about twenty years behind the cultural norm - they can argue that they represent a conservative position. This has been part of a widespread and steady progression into apostasy.

The Trump faction is motivated by other than Biblical concerns. There are fiscal and economics issues, but largely they're motivated by a political agenda. Reinhart argues that mental illness is the result of poverty, childhood trauma, and incarceration and thus argues that since Trump is waging war on the poor, he is functionally exacerbating the mental health crisis. It's a bit of a non sequitur and I'm not sure the premise even stands. Some of the most mentally unstable people I know are highly functioning members of the upper middle class. It's all how these things are defined and while psychiatry pretends to be science based - it's largely subjective. There's no doubt poverty and childhood trauma lead to problems later in life but this is a reductionism at best. There are plenty of people who grew up in great adversity and became super or even over-achievers (which can also be a problem) or (in defiance of their upbringing) great humanitarians, activists, and advocates for the weak.

This is not to defend Trump or his cronies. They're looking to break both The Great Society and the New Deal and make a few bucks in the process. I agree that psychiatric medications are ineffective. They suppress symptoms, will power, and concentration. They fog the mind. They heal no one. No one is ever 'cured' by these treatments.

The call to open asylums is simply an attempt to expand the police state. It's another type of incarceration and since a great deal of it's infrastructure was dismantled under Reagan, there's an opportunity to re-create and re-draft the outlines of the system. I'm quite sure they would want to privatize it. The idea is not to help people (if these systems are really capable of that) but to shut them away and even torment them so that they'll avoid welfare programmes and conform. This isn't a war against psychiatry - that's just a means to an end. The utilization of asylums is actually a historically established strategy of authoritarian regimes.

As a Christian, I cannot agree with Reinhart about the spectrum of sodomite perversions or autism. There are of course some under that diagnosis that clearly have some kind of physiological issue, but the bulk of those 'on the spectrum' seem to struggle more with behavioural issues. And the fact that behavioural treatments are prescribed, demonstrate that the problems are not physiological but are taught and learned. Modern parenting has been nothing short of a catastrophe.

As far as the eugenicist claims being made against Trump and Kennedy - that may be overstated, by which I mean it would be hard to prove. I don't doubt that these men harbour evil opinions and there is certainly a great deal of racism at work within Trumpism - despite the fact there are minorities that line up behind him. Of course some of these same people (especially immigrant communities) are now realizing they've been misled. In other cases, you have Blacks that are misled by the fact that you have highly touted figures like Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell who are corrupt and given a platform solely because they are Black. Affirmative Action is the only reason Thomas (a corrupt incompetent)is even on the Supreme Court. Sowell is more a simpleton philosopher than an economist, but as a Black man spouting Capitalist orthodoxy, he was guaranteed a platform. The Right is always eager to promote minorities to cover the deep racism that dominates its circles.

In other cases, genuine Left-wing analysis will point out that once people (regardless of colour) ascend into the middle and upper classes they tend to adopt the values of that class and will leave race-driven interests behind or at best engage in token activism - like the highly consumerist upper middle class women I know who are militant about recycling glass, plastics, and cardboard, even while they live (alone) in massive houses, heated to high temperatures, with refrigerators packed to the gills, and who shop incessantly and gobble up more resources than a large family.

This is why this article is frustrating. Reinhart is right to be concerned and has certainly connected some dots - but half of the connections are bogus as are many of his assumptions. That said, what he does get right is troubling and all the more when one understands that the real agenda does not align with the rhetoric.

Further, the Evangelical response is likely to be just as troubling given there are some who put loyalty to Trump above all other truth commitments (and thus are apostates). Others are so given over to psychology and its assumptions that these moves will upset them. They will protest but not for the right Scripturally-based reasons. Others will celebrate these moves and argue that Trump is simply applying a Biblical worldview - when nothing could be further from the truth. And sadly in many cases these Evangelical leaders will go along with, participate in, and profit from this farce.

Reading about the likes of Bolsonaro and Orban, it must also be acknowledged that psychology is inseparable from Identity Politics which is the chief form of so-called Leftist opposition. Genuine Left-wing political concerns connected to labour movements and the attempt to combat the capitalist oligarchy are largely non-existent in contemporary Western politics. Most 'Left-wing' parties embrace capitalism and the Atlanticist imperial paradigm. And rather than functioning in an adversarial role to capitalist-dominated institutions, they have (in response to the Right) embraced them with greater fervour while pouring all their energies into identity politics and special rights.

Reinhart takes a swipe at 'evangelical movements' and their pseudo-science. I'm guessing he's referring to things like 'gay conversion therapy' which is admittedly problematic. This is not because of the science involved, as so much of the science related to homosexuality is bogus to begin with, and built on ever-changing false assumptions. Rather, the issue is its an attempt to deal with sin by means of therapeutic techniques as opposed to Spirit-wrought, Word-driven repentance. The idea that such tasks can be handed over by the Church to various trained professionals and institutions (which are by definition syncretist) is highly problematic.

At the end of the day, the world is broken and fallen and there are no fixes to these problems. But Trump and his people are just political opportunists and deceitful scoundrels who will use any argument to crush their opponents, garner more power, and make a profit. Trump, his cronies, and in general the contemporary GOP are fascistic but I cannot (even for a moment) go along with Reinhart's materialist line of reasoning.

It's a confusing mess and few are able to navigate these perilous waters. And because Church leadership is often corrupt or unwilling to challenge its members, the problems persist and continue to worsen. Clear thinking is needed and at this point in time, it involves careful evaluation and the application of Biblical thinking which is in defiance of all cultural paradigms, norms, and even options that are on the table. As should be expected, the Christian response and way of living in the world is at odds with every facet of Babel's thinking and the solutions it offers.