THE WORD psychology has its roots in Greek: psyche, the soul, spirit, or mind’ and logos, the Divine word; speech; the word which expresses the inward thought; the thought itself.

So, it is the putting into words of our inner experience of soul, spirit or mind. In other words, saying what it is like to be human. What it is to be yourself. It is a noble study.

But oh, what horrendous crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of 20th Century psychology. Because of the excessive reverence that we have for scientific experts in this day and age, those who have climbed the greasy pole of academic ambition to be declared an “authority” on psychology are given power to validate human lives and behaviour – and, as a corollary, the power to declare other lives invalid. This is nowhere more painfully evident than in the gay men and lesbians I know who have, deep down, a belief that they are sick, that they suffer from an arrested development on the road to full, mature heterosexuality and, so often, that they are worth nothing.

Most commonly, in many people of my generation and older, when their parents found out that their teenage son or daughter was “like that” they packed them off to the priest or the shrink, to be “put straight.”

Lustful path

When a religious, “moral” argument is used to deny you a sense of dignity, and a sense of belonging, and you are accused of being evil, you are at least being credited with possessing a fully working brain, that knows the difference between good and evil, and which has gaily set co-ordinates on Satan’s lustful path to inglorious Hell and Damnation.

There’s something invigorating about engaging in verbal combat with a fundamentalist bigot – the battle-lines are drawn, and there’s no namby-pamby liberalism to dilute their poison. You’re marked down for roasting in the Inferno, and it’s up to you to see the light and change your mind. You can do it, if you believe in Jesus/Krishna/Allah. Sacrifice earthly delights for your reward in heaven, join my club, make me more powerful, and we do take Access and Visa for your convenience.

When faced with this, it is possible to say that you are an atheist and that you don’t believe in their God thank you very much, and all their arguments vanish like a puff of smoke. They may curse you for being an unbeliever, but that’s their problem, not yours. Walk away from it. You can free yourself.

But when a “psychological” argument is used against you, and you find yourself pitted against a psychologist/psychiatrist/psychotherapist who feeds on your own self-doubt and tries to push you towards an unattainable heterosexual “goal,” then the scenario is vastly different. It feels like you’re stuck in a web of insidious half-truths and innuendoes which can entangle you, and leave you a self-hating miserable mess. But this time, it is so much more difficult to say that you don’t believe in their God, Science. No matter how clear you are about your love for people of the same sex as you, you find that there is a glass wall behind which you can sense that most corrosive of sentiments, pity. Your perception of yourself is doubted, and you are not believed. It is so much more damaging than the hellfire and brimstone bluster of the Bible-thumpers.

The Bit Inside

Increasingly, fundamentalist bigots, such as those in Family Solidarity, now use the language of “sickness” and “disorder”, and they bring forward “experts” from academic psychology and psychiatry to support their point of view, that we are not fully mature, that we cannot be trusted with children, that we should not be protected against discrimination.

It’s all very depressing. Or is it? Perhaps it’s time for us not just to engage in political battles to ascertain basic human rights, but also to work on a different level. It’s the level where scientists, moralists, politicians, priests, “experts,” all cannot touch us. It’s inside of us. It’s that bit inside men that loves other men, that bit inside women that loves other women. There is such strong opposition to that bit of us being expressed and celebrated, that more and more subtle arguments are being used, the most powerful of which is the pathologisation of human existence as it is experienced, by you and me.

If any of you have had bad experiences at the hands of such experts, I would like to hear of them – you don’t have to give your name, although if you do, it will remain confidential. I should say that I believe in the value of good psychotherapy, and that I have not been personally damaged by my experience of it. But what was surprising to me was the extent to which it became apparent that I half-believed that I was immature on a deep, inner level, because I was gay – and I suspect a hell of a lot of others feel the same. Reading some of the books that you can pick off the shelf under the label “psychology” will make your hair stand on end. Still, in 1994.

The more the battleground shifts from the religious to the psychological, the better prepared we should be to meet all the arguments. And as a prerequisite, we should banish all the niggling doubts that fester away inside of us which make us doubt our own experience of life. Honour your own perception. Become your own psych-ologist, and put words to your own soul.