Psychology of Psychology: Sex and Depression

By T.J. Dillion

An experimental psychologist provides a legitimate history of psychology while spoofing common practices and the 'Father' of psychoanalysis. Dr. Dillion suffers from severe depression and discovers that organism offers short-term relief. Fortunately, he was teaching in the 'make love, not war' era in a profession dominated by women. His ear

• Language: English
• Publisher: GoldTouch Press, LLC
• Release date: Nov 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781956803600

T.J. Dillion

T.J. Dillion, a hardnosed Experimental Psychologist, questions the validity of research done in Clinical Psychology in support of popular for clinical depression. He delves into published literature from the National Library of Medicine (MEDLINE) to 'Pop' psychology where opinion tops evidence. He attempts to rationalize the roots of the Mind and Body concept from earlier thinking, i.e. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, et. al. as they differed from Augustinian Christian dogma that opined that nothing could replace what we see and hear. Dr. Dillion is a member of the Korzybski belief that 'Words' are too unstable to represent the concrete world and must change with the times. Any definition of a 'thing' using words, is subject to change as new 'things' reach higher levels of abstraction into an 'essence' of the original 'word.' He set out to test orgasm as a 'cure' for depression gaining willing subjects but only brief success.

Book preview

Psychology

of

Psychology

Sex and Depression

T.J. Dillion

Copyright © 2021 by T.J. Dillion.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2021923826

Paperback:    978-1-956803-59-4

eBook:            978-1-956803-60-0

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER-ONE

CHAPTER-TWO

CHAPTER-THREE

CHAPTER-FOUR

CHAPTER-FIVE

CHAPTER-SIX

CHAPTER-SEVEN

CHAPTER-EIGHT

CHAPTER-NINE

CHAPTER–TEN

CHAPTER-ELEVEN

CHAPTER-TWELVE

CHAPTER-THIRTEEN

CHAPTER-FOURTEEN

CHAPTER-FIFTEEN

CHAPTER-SIXTEEN

CHAPTER-SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER-EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER-NINETEEN

CHAPTER-TWENTY

CHAPTER-TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER-FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

FINAL CHAPTER

REFERENCES

TO: All the Girls I have Loved Before.

This book follows two paths. The first path follows the fictional life of T.J. Dillion as he seeks to diminish the suffering of depression that has followed him through his rememberable lifetime. The characters, incidences and dialogue are drawn from the authors imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

The second path is a historical narration— by the fictional T.J. Dillion—of the progression of clinical psychology through the eyes of an experimental psychologist. The sited references are true and real found in published journals, books, pamphlets, websites, and other various sources, following standard academic referencing procedures. The opinions, conclusions and/or reported research are the opinions of the referenced authors.

Depression is a real, and present negative influence on our productiveness today. There is no ‘cure;’ this book follows a young professional in his quest for relief in a less than acceptable fashion. However, his disorder is real as reflected by his bitter failures in ‘something’ to make it go away. Mental Health professionals are in the ever-ending search for treatments, and some leave us scratching our heads. The Janssen Pharmaceutical Company (2018) received FDA approval for the use of Ketamine, a widely used anesthetic for dogs, in the treatment for depression. Such treatments are best considered in the analogy oft quoted by my grandpa: It’s like peeing in your pants to keep warm: It works for a little while.

PROLOGUE

I fear that I am psychologically unbalanced; I have an overwhelming desire for sex. As I write this, the country is in the middle of a sexual revolution and, because of my profession, I find myself confronted with a plentitude of ready and willing sexual partners. Despite that, my hunger is insatiate. Am I sick? For sure, I am manic-depressive. According to my fundamentalist religious upbringing, I am a pitiful sinner, and my depression is caused by guilt. Does sin equate to sick?

Where do I go for help? Indeed, no preacher or priest will advise beyond the ‘repent’ dictate. That leaves counseling. Are there counselors that are free of the central psychological philosophy? I have a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology and, as a result, I have been brainwashed to believe that clinical psychology (the PsyD) cannot provide an answer to my conundrum. Hence, it appears that I have but two options: Religion, which is not likely to happen, medicate or, suck it up. There is a third option that violates my religious training—coitus. Organism releases at least two chemicals into the brain, Serotonin (antidepressants, i.e., Prozac, Paxil, and Zoloft) and Dopamine (Adderall).

This is not a scientific dialogue—but neither, I am finding, is psychology.

Psychology, as it now appears, is Conventional Wisdom; it is rooted in ‘Evidence-based Practice’ that assumes ‘expert opinion’ to be scientific ‘evidence.’ Historically, then, some ‘evidence’ (opinions) became the foundation of more ‘evidence’ (opinions) stacked layer upon layer, building a Tower of Babble of ‘expert evidence’ throughout history, never discarding the unproven by way of rigid scientific investigation. The observation that fiction repeated often enough becomes factual, is the mantra of propaganda used by those seeking to control the populace; psychology is propaganda and propaganda is psychology.

The conventional wisdom of psychology is, at best, murky. The highly sophisticated science of Experimental Psychology, with a superb birthright, is reduced—in the minds of the proletariat—to Popular (Pop) psychology and Psychobabble. Pop psychology severely ‘dumbs downs’ human thoughts and behaviors into a pseudoscience that finds followers in practitioners and the masses alike. The purveyors of Pop psychology may be of any ilk ranging from those with college degrees in psychology to the unschooled tent preacher. Achieving a gullible following requires the use of—perhaps not intentionally—one or more of the seven classical propaganda techniques: (1) Transference: presenting another product besides one being touted or relating to something else. (2) Testimonial (quite common) Presenting successful use often by celebrities. (3) Plain Folks: Often using ‘plus-size’ models. (4) Glittering Generalities. (5) Bandwagon: everybody is doing it. (6) Name Calling. (7). Card Stacking: Telling half-truths and omitting contradictions. Psychological jargon is used to camouflage shams as respectable scientific material. To rid ourselves of these misconceptions, we best look at the history of psychology.

The thoughts of such early philosophers— i.e., Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, et al., circa 600BC—cogitated theories of physical and mental reality via introspection and observation fixated on the mind and soul. Their followers remained in that rut faithfully until the beginning of Christianity, where theologians became the mainstream purveyors of Gods’ commandments about how to save our souls through mind control. Augustine, circa 400AD, an early Christian theologian and philosopher, led the way to an entirely new dogma in Christianity and Western philosophy and the nonsense called the Liturgy that is firmly in place in mainline churches today. A couple hundred years later brought us Muhammad and the Islamic faith as another God-centered organization.

We leap forward to the 1200s to the era of Roger Bacon (Hackett (ed.) 1997. Bacon espoused the use of Aristotelian empiricism in the study of just about everything; no authority, no belief, no theory, no theology, could replace empirical observation (positivism). He rejected rationalism because he perceived it to have an emotionally based emphasis on words. About 100 years later Alfred Korzybski (1994) argued that human knowledge is limited both by the human nervous system and languages humans have developed, giving only abstract connections between the observed and the ‘documentation’ of that observation, therefore assuring no direct access to reality. He summated this relationship as The word is not the Thing, thus supporting Baconian Science? A modern philosopher takes another view: It’s funny how much more you can say with a few bars of music than a basketful of words. (Humphry Bogart in Passage to Marseille, 1944).

Augustinian theodicy uniquely defined the boundaries of mainstream religion vis-à-vis priesthood and philosophy up until Martin Luther published his Ninety-five Theses or Disputation on the Power of Indulgences. Luther was not trying to dislodge the Mother Church from its position; he was protesting practices he considered ill-advised. But, he opened the floodgate of extreme diversity giving us the proliferation of new protestant churches some listed here: Southern Baptist Convention, United Methodist Church, Church of God in Christ, National Baptist Convention, Evangelical Lutheran Church, National Baptist Convention of America, Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, National Missionary Baptist Convention of America, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Episcopal Church, Churches of Christ, Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and only the Lord himself knows how many more. What is critical here is the ever-present petit schisms across most of these ‘denominations’ establishes an overwhelming religious prejudicial environment thus shaping psychology as just another faith-based religion. Is psychology dogma?

The main character of this book is the product of a fundamentalist religious upbringing. He left that environment to serve in the Korean War, followed by BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees from top universities free of religious influences. From that environment, he is entering the seventies and finds sex aplenty for the taking. He has some problems with that and seeks justification by way of the history of psychology and concurrent religious philosophy that appeared to share a way of life compatible with his that would allow him to satisfy his insatiable hunger for favors of the fairer sex. He digs deep into the histories of sex, seeking guidance but discovers copulation, in one form or another, has been with us forever, sometimes as an evil, starting mostly during the Victorian era and espoused by many mainline religions today.

Indeed, dogma is the root of all faith(s) but one canon that has been held high above all others: a good roll in the hay beats a dull sermon any ol’ day, and there is where you find me today: Fucking every girl I deem genuinely dedicated to the concept of copulation for mutual pleasure, and for the residual reduction of an unforgiving depression that lingers thereafter.

That’s more than one can get on a psychiatrist’s couch!

CHAPTER-ONE

My first sexual experience was in a cherry tree, with my cousin; my second was under a cherry tree, in full bloom, next to a marble crypt. The first was serendipitous; the second was an unabashed, premeditated, in-depth penetration into the world of sex that plagued my soul for many months, maybe years. The invitation came by way of the classroom-express, passed row by row across the room. The note, folded and stuck together with mucilage, arrived without incident just before let-out time. It said, Want to fuck? Meet me at the Greenspan mausoleum after school.

I was repulsed, and I was ecstatic; the prettiest girl in the whole world—well, at least in my mind at the moment; she was actually quite ugly— was offering to fulfill the wish of every boy in the school. I raised my head to say no only to find her turned sidewise in her chair, her already