Imagine a core that radiates heat. Around that core are concentric circles that are conduits for the same heat that pulses at the core. Each succeeding concentric circles provides warmth for all living within the psychological culture. As each subsequent concentric circle is further away from the core the heat is less intense though remaining of the same nature. In their living people move closer to and further away from the core but nearly all of them are conditioned by the heat of the core.
This is the way the psychological functions in our culture. The core that is white hot is Psychology / Psychiatry proper. First developed by Wihlem Wundt but turned into a core of white hot influence by a combination of Wundt’s disciples and the heavy financing of the Robber Barons and / or their Foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, etc.) this heat then radiated into almost every other discipline. In the States it begins with G. Stanley Hall who brought Wundt’s presuppositions and methodology to the States. From there Disciples of Hall such as Dewey and Thorndike arise, followed by many many others.
The main presupposition of the Psychological remains that man is a animal that is trained on the basis of stimulus and response. Wilhelm Wundt and his disciples believed that in a child there is nothing to begin with but a body, a brain, and a nervous system. As such, training must be achieved by inducing sensations into that nervous system. The Child is not thought capable of volitional control over his actions, or of deciding whether he will act or not act in a certain way. Wundt and his disciples believed the child’s actions were preconditioned and beyond his control precisely because the child was a stimulus response machine. Because this premise ruled stimulus used looked to create a certain experience for the child while seeking to draw out the proper emotions. The presence of the Psychological can be observed by the continued emphasis on the experience and the emotions. Men are not trained to think but are conditioned into the proper experience by just the right stimuli playing upon their emotions seeking to evoke certain proper emotions. People are trained and that training is reinforced at every turn.
You find the core in Academia especially but also wherever the Psychological is practiced as a trade or craft. The first concentric circle that is produced by the psychological and shares its now only slightly diminished heat is the Teaching profession. It is the case now that what you find in someone trained to be a Teacher is someone who has been saturated in a non-Biblical way of thinking. The whole premise of the teaching profession is the Psychological — Wundtian in one form or another. This is not to say that teachers cannot be Christians but it is to say that teachers, generally speaking, (and generally speaking allows for exceptions folks) don’t think Biblically because they have been saturated in the premises and presuppositions of the Psychological. So great as the Psychological been upon the teaching industry (Teaching Colleges) that the trade of “Teacher” and “Psychologist” and the mindset trained in those trades is nearly identical.
Of course another concentric circles is the whole Sociological. Here you find the social workers that we are besotted with as a people. From “Welfare worker,” to “Friend of the Court,” to those working as School Counselors, to those contracted to choose our Pastors and Missionaries, and in a thousand other capacities the Social Worker does their bit to continue to insure that our culture is defined by the Psychological.
Another concentric circle would be the Church where people are not taught their undoubted Catholic Christian faith so much as they are trained into a Faith that is naught but a baptism of the Psychological. Conversion is sought for by setting up just the right conditions that will produce the proper stimuli that will produce the necessary emotion to “get folks saved.” The is one reason why the Emergent Church (and the Church Growth movement before them) is so popular. The Emergent Church is predicated upon giving people the stimuli that they have been conditioned to covet 24-7.
The evidence of the success of the culture of the Psychological is seen in the way in which we are advertised to. The appeal is intended to be stimuli that is to evoke a certain trained response. There is no appeal to the mind. Advertising then is another concentric circle. In point of fact, most communication in our culture, from talk radio, to mainstream media, to print media, to television, to Movies, to many of the books printed, to the political speech, are nothing but glorified advertising. Propaganda via advertising is how the Psychological culture communicates. We have become the mob and the mob is communicated with via propaganda and propaganda is best delivered by advertising.
The culture of the Psychological results in a dumbed down citizenry as citizens are now manipulated by those elites who know what stimuli buttons to push to get a conditioned result that people have been trained into.
One consequence of all this is that those who have been educated, according to an earlier model where critical and analytical thinking are developed, are now those who are like the last remaining survivors in the Donald Sutherland movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” There is no safe place for them that allows them from being attacked by the psychological pod people.