This editorial is a translation of Italian paper with the title: Dalla “famiglia del bosco” ad una riflessione sulla Giustizia minorile e sull’abuso e mis-uso della Psicologia. For any academc pourpore and interpretative doubts, please, look the Italian paper.
When certain limits are exceeded, it is urgent to speak out and reflect openly.
For some time to now, Italian Juvenile Justice System has been in deep crisis. A crisis that seems to emerge from the very structure of Juvenile Judicial Bodies, composed of mixed judging panels. These panels are made up of both professional judges and “honorary judges”. While the former are lawyers with degrees in Law, the latter usually have no legal expertise whatsoever, but are psychologists, social workers, educators et similia (and so on).
According to the abstract theory behind this choice (ratio), the objective would be to create a judicial body with multidisciplinary skills. A Judicial Body, which created in this manner, capable of protecting minors in the best possible way. An ambitious theoretical objective, which, however, in practice has proved to be pure utopia. Nothing more, nothing less, than utopia. Ending up creating a “Legal monster”.
In fact, in the practical experience, the honorary components contribute significantly to the “miscarriage of justice”. Again, to the failure of the Legal System and its ambitious aims. This is what is observed in juvenile cases. This causes the Courts to lose its role as a third party and impartial entity, as intended by the Italian Constitution and European Law. Many honorary members (psychologists; social workers; educators) interpret their role (without understanding anything about Law) as that of a “public defender of the work of their colleagues in the Social Services (SS)”. A defence that is carried out within / inside the same Courts / Tribunals / Judicial Panels, which – under such circumstances and the pressure of many honorary judges – often falls into accepting any kind of actions (even the most terrible) made by Social Services. This happens in a completely “uncritical” manner and leads to pronounce those sets of grotesque decisions that have been astonishing us. These decisions have transformed Juvenile Justice System into a modern Dante’s circle of Hell.
Please, consider a Legal System in which: on the one hand, we have the Social Services, which (being a party to the legal proceedings with all its biases and prejudices) may be either right or wrong. On the other hand, we have the family and its lawyers who, through their technical consultants, try to prove their case and point out the errors / mistakes of the former. At the centre, we have a collegiate judge (composed of four magistrates in the Tribunal – first degree of judgment – and five in the Court of Appeals for the juvenile section). Two of whom are “honorary”. A Judicial Panel that – instead of being third party and impartial entity (in other words, capable of: weighing the pros and cons of the case in a neutral and critical manner; studying the case in depth and from an interdisciplinary perspective) – has within itself two honorary members who acts from “public defenders” of the work of the Social Services. Whatever, the later, has done! This, of course, does not happen every time and/or with all the “honorary judges”, but in the very most cases and with most of them. For instance, I have been one of the very few who were used to analysing, in a critical way, the actions of Social Services. Yet, to study all the files of the cases, with all their evidences, of both the first grade of judgment and the second grade. However, this is very, very, rare. Almost a singularity!
Most of times, it happens that the Honorary Judges, as I have written – acts from “public defenders” of the work of the Social Services. A situation that make someone to remember an famous Italian TV commercial that says: “Do you like to win easily?”.
Two out of four and/or five judges, in fact, understanding very few, better nothing at all, about Law. They do not even read either the case files or the parties’ documents. Rather, they merely leaf through the latest Social Services’ reports in an distracted way just 10 minutes before the chamber meeting!?!? Then, they act as zealous “public defenders” of Social Services!?!? This is the Judge to whom the lives of minors are entrusted. This is the Judge to whom the destinies of entire families are entrusted. This is the Judge who, in the Legislator’s intent, should have evaluated the cases in a thorough and interdisciplinary manner!
In other words, their typical contribution can be summed up in a single leitmotif: “let the social services do whatever they want”! Ergo… in the absence of real control, there is the emerging of the dramatic situation that afflicting the juvenile sector. The dramatic situation, which we can see on a daily basis. Of course, the growing, past and present, scandals are surprising some people, but what should be more surprising is why this chimera and/or legal Frankenstein were allowed to exist.
Yet, conflicts of interests, which are often blatant, but rarely discussed, are most significant. Although the law and public notices provide for grounds for incompatibility, these are completely inadequate to exclude them. The vast majority of “honorary judges” work as psychologists and/or social workers and/or educators with municipalities, Social Services and local authorities. In other words, those same subjects that they have to judge. Thus, it matters very few, very few, in substantive terms, whether they refrain from these duties during the brief period in which they serve in their “high office”. An “office” that they “spend” (also in terms of professional fees) in the “revolving door” mechanism that occurs in the world of minors. For example, moving from “honorary judge” to working in Social Services and/or juvenile facilities and vice versa.
A genuine reform of Juvenile Justice System should focus exclusively on legal training and education for its Judges. In other words, all of them should be only lawyers with a Master degree in Law. Indeed, only lawyers are able to have an impartial and independent habitus (forma mentis) like a Judge must have. Yet, it is possible to enable legal professionals to explore certain psychosocial and/or medical topics in depth such as: the developmental psychology; the social psychology; the child neuropsychiatry; the juvenile delinquency; etc. This, to allow, these judges, who must remain 100% lawyers, impartial and independent, to develop also a critical logical-epistemological capacity that would make them to be true periti peritorum. The present writer has advised this for years! In other words, legal professionals / lawyers / judges should also became competent to examine, in a critical, active and informed, manner the work of Social Services, psychologists, social workers and the other professionals, with whom they interact. This critical logical-epistemological capacity is a necessary skill in order not to fall into the trap of being mere passive recipients of the “whims” of Social Services operators. Subjects, the latter, who get used – in a Legal System like that one – to go to complaining from the magistrates and/or judges every time they want to make their “whims” enforced by legal decisions. This happens always and every time they encounter parents and/or relatives and/or minors who dare to have a different opinion, and / or to be “uncooperative” with their “whims”, and/or to be “unreceptive” to their ideology.
The necessary Reform, which I urge to be carried out in order to “restore” Juvenile Justice System, should include the complete exclusion from the judging panels of all individuals without any legal expertise, exempli gratia, without a Master’s degree in Law. In other words, the “honorary judges” and/or “private components” (as they are also called in Italy) of the Judicial System and Juvenile Justice System. This due the reasons I explained above. Therefore, they must be removed. This has to be done, in particular way, when those individuals are also registered with the professional associations of psychologists and/or social workers and so on. A necessary action, the latter, to avoid the perverse and perverting mechanism of the “revolving doors” as I have above descried. A mechanism that has led to the very concept of “the best interests of the child” becoming, in practice, simulacrum à la Baudrillard. A concept that, emptied of its own meaning, has become a sort of “Trojan horse” within which a quite different concept has been hided: “the prevailing interests of certain schools of thought and/or ideologies of certain individuals”. In other words, the Juvenile Justice System is becoming a place where the Communities of Discourse a là Lyotard fight struggles for power and meaning for configuring and reconfiguring beliefs and narratives, redefining power relations and making the interests of one group and/or some lobbies to prevail over those of another’s. All this, to detriment of minors and their families.
The case of Catherine Birmingham and Nathan Trevallion (also called by Italian mass media like “forest and /or wood family”) is a well-known example of what happens in the Legal System that I have above described. Everything happened, in fact, borders on moral and psychological “torture” both to the detriment of the minors and their family. A torture, which – ultimately – falls always back onto the minors. Otherwise, nothing could be explained, unless certain decisions were made under the influence of “something strange” and/or inexplicable!
Let us take – as our starting point – the latest press release from the National Ombudsman for Children and Adolescents dated March 6, 2026. The National Ombudsman, correctly, has cited an independent report “carried out by the Lanciano Vasto Chieti Local Health Authority”. A report that states: “the state of distress and suffering of minors” – created by repeated and recurrent separations – requires being “essential to promote and restore a sense of normalcy in the emotional situation by ensuring the continuity of family ties in order to eliminate the distressing behaviour exhibited by the children”. The trauma suffered by the minors at each removal and relocation into a different context is undeniable. This is as they were often torn away “by force” from their parents!!!!!
A series of actions that not only constitute a direct cause of trauma for both minors and their families, but which, at the same time, alter Reality itself. This, creating a fictitious critical situation that either did not exist before those interventions or would never have existed, unless those disruptive interventions had been implemented. Subjecting someone, especially a minor, who is not yet fully developed and/or formed, to a series of repeated traumas over time (as it is happening in this case and in many others) constitutes a kind of “brainwashing”. In other words, a condition where there is: a growing weakening of the subject’s ability to think independently; a breakdown of their critical faculties; …that causing them to fall into a state of regression in which they are forced into a kind of dependence. A dependence used by those who inflicted the traumas to impose on these innocent victims “negative re-education” and/or “re-programming” in accordance with the wishes and/or ideology of the traumatizer.
The boundary between what is happening and “enslavement”, here, risks becoming a “language’s game” à la Wittgenstein.
In some cases, such conduct can also cause dissociative and post-traumatic disorders, a breakdown of the subject’s mental structure, as well as anxiety, depressive and sleep, disorders, which would be – the latter – the least of their problems in the aforementioned context!
Not only. This System also tends to create false evidence to support inappropriate / wrong interventions / actions in situations that were originally “normal”.
It is well known, in fact, in psychological and social sciences, that any intervention that modifies the initial situations artificially alters the natural context, creating ex post those same conditions of discomfort that are then used to justify the erroneous interventions carried out previously. No one pays for the mistakes. This, playing on the “punctuation” of occurrences.
In the case of the “forest and/or wood family” (case of Catherine Birmingham and Nathan Trevallion), however it will end up, all the reasons – which were initially complained for justifying the actions done by Social Services – have disappeared and/or melted away like “snow in the sun” and/or proved to be unfounded. Now, the whole case / affair is self-perpetuating. In other words, it is continuing – solely and exclusively – due to situations and motivations self-generated / self-created by the case itself and by the actions taken by Social Services! This, as I described above. The “main allegation” against these people is their “lack of cooperation” with those persons who, in the very fact, are torturing them! If this is not madness! Furthermore, as the actions of the Social Services is lacking any objective reason for being justified, the Social Services are trying to create false pretexts through the vacuity, ambiguity and fluidity, better the complete “inconsistency”, of psychological assessments and/or interpretations. Interpretations, the latter, which can be used to say anything, everything, and their opposite as I will illustrate in another paper and/or article and/or publication. It means that psychology can be used, inside a Legal System, to create false evidences when there are not objective elements in Reality!! It is something like what happened in Middle Ages when somebody were accused to be a “witch” and/or an “heretic” and then, with the torture, make him / her to confess!
In other words, a “normal” situation in its natural context, as it is in its initial time, can be change into a situation of discomfort and maladjustment through a series of repeated actions capable of causing distress and suffering. This situation has led the Juvenile Justice System, which is now out of control, to act like Malleus Maleficarum 2.0.
While in the Middle Ages people accused of “phantasmagorical crimes” were physically tortured until they confessed and/or they were made believing to had committed crimes they had never committed, nowadays, they are tortured with more subtle psychological techniques, apparently less cruel, in which physical torment is replaced by psychological and social torment. Behind different appearances / forms, the substance is the same. Here, there are continuous removal and separation of minor children from their parents, grandparents, relatives, friends and the family environment in which they grew up. This action places them in a sort of depersonalizing and disruptive “isolation” in which, in fact, the “negative re-education” – as I wrote above – takes place.
Even in this case, the line between what is happening here, nowadays, and what has happened and is happening in the re-education camps is more a matter of empty semantics, propaganda and “language’s games” à la Wittgenstein, rather than anything else. Indeed, like in the re-education camps, which were / are used by various Regimes to break down the psyche of opponents and/or dissidents for “re-programing” them in such a way as to turn them into obedient servants of their ideology, here there is something of similar. From a substantive point of view, indeed, the underlying mechanisms involved (in other words: the psychological and social dynamics; the neurophysiological, cognitive, social, evolutionary, processes and so on) are the same. The continuous traumatization of the victims is also the same!
In the end, the Social Services themselves – with their own “invasive” and “modifying” interventions – create and self-induced those states of deep pain, existential anguish, lived by the families and minors that are their victims. Their actions are disruptive on the family lives, on their natural contexts, on their been. Everything happens due mere “whims” of certain “sorcerer’s apprentices” (nowadays called psychologists and/or social workers and/or educators). Sorcerer’s apprentices whom – driven: by the zeal of an ideology; by empty constructs created artificially and arbitrary (putting together a series of correlations in a world where everything correlates with everything else) – like medieval inquisitors, actually vent their “sadism” onto innocent victims.
When asked “why” certain things happen, the answer is “sadism,” nothing more, nothing less, than the “sadism” of some people. It is not Science at all, it is not Law at all, but “sadism” of those who use Science and Law and interpret them for doing those things! Then, cowardly, they hide themselves behind Science and Law!!
Remember well: when an initial situation it is changed, it does not important in which way, whatever fallows after these changes cannot tell us anything about the initial situation in its objectivity nature. Thus, all the reports and / or assessments and / or what so ever can been done later can only measure and / or evaluate the reactive discomfort create ex post by those very changes after their occurrence. In other words, any situation / case can be know only whether it is observed inside its initial and natural context without any modification. After any kind of interventions / actions / changes can be identified only the state of distress self-induced by the very transformations imposed by the operators on the family and minors.
Damages, often, caused without any real reason. Nothing of concrete, of tangible and / or of effective. Long series of separations, removals, prohibitions on meeting grandparents and relatives, even talk to them on the phone for just 10 minutes to wish them a Merry Christmas. Everything happens, often, following mere “complaints” from operators of Social Services for “a possible non-cooperation” perhaps acted by parents and/or grandparents and/or relatives and/or minors. All of them guilty of not being obedient servants of the ideology to which “psychologists” want to “re-educate” and/or “re-program” their victims!
In other words, the System has arrived at a sort of blackmail and/or dictatorship according to which: “if you don’t do what I say, I’ll take your children away.” An inhumane and humiliating educational method, which we can only ironically describe as very, very, “democratic,” “liberal” and “modern”. So “advanced” that it makes us regret even a few “spankings” which, in comparison, were nothing, but a caress! A “bruise” passes and disappears, leaving no trace. A repeated series of traumas destroy the human beings and their lives forever. Not understanding this is simply monstrous, inhuman and horrifying. Talking about “good faith” becomes more of an “exercise in style,” beautiful posture, gentle courtesy, good manners, a legal presumption to be assumed until proven otherwise, but which – if present – does not eliminate and / or exclude the grave / serious responsibilities, negligence and abysmal incompetence, of those who are carrying out what is happening.
A situation, a set of facts, which shows the degradation, which these “psychologists” have reached. New “fervent” Inquisitors 2.0.
For these reasons, any Intellectually Honest person who is genuinely interested in the welfare of the children would, before making any changes, carry out all assessments and/or evaluations inside the peaceful “natural environment” in which the children and their family have grown up and/or live. This without making any change as it is the only possible way to proceed. The only very exemption can be done only in the presence of a real, I emphasize real, situations of violence and/or so critical that do not allow to have the time necessary to carry out and complete all the assessments in the tranquillity of the original, unaltered, family environment in which the minors lived.
Otherwise, both minors and their families are placed in a condition of “captivity” (forgive me for using this term, but it clearly conveys the idea) in which the very possibility of photographing and/or recording the real conditions – which were experienced by those subjects – is precluded a priori. This, as you understand, would create – in an artificial and contrived way – the same context of distress, nervousness, and impatience, better the same psychological, physical and social, discomfort, which is used ex post by Social Services to justify their initial “inappropriate” and “unnecessary” interventions! So someone can ask: what happens if nothing is found and / or no body reacts to those provocations? Quite simply, the “psychologists” would continue with their delusional work, complaining about “uncooperative behaviour” (as we wrote above). Again, playing the “Jolly”, i.e., their “trump card”. The “card”’ they have always “in their hand”: accusing parents of “poor parenting skills”! Whatever this “empty, utterly and void, verbal phrase” may mean!
Many cases in Juvenile Justice System – considering that every time a case is opened in the Juvenile Court, it is never closed until the minors reach the age of majority – exist only for self-generating problems created by the same System. This due to the perverse and preventing mechanism that it is set in motion. A mechanism, as I described above, that instead of resolving situations, create the same problems that pretends to resolve!
Instead of addressing the real situations of marginalization, profound degradation and social hardship, that are more and more evident in Italian cities, which no one of the Social Services intervenes, the Juvenile Justice System creates itself, even self-provoking, some “cases” moved by the “sadism” of somebody as I mentioned above. Meanwhile, there is an increasing mass of immigrants that are abandoned and/or discharged into the streets, left to fend for themselves. Meanwhile, there is an increasing poverty among the Italian population that are left without any concreted help.
All these cases, thus, tell so little about the families involved, but so much about the operators and the psychologists who deal with them. Yet, about the “sadism” that some people inflict on others persons. Persons that are chosen “at random” and/or simply (like in mobbing) for their “weakness” and/or “harmlessness” and/or “tranquillity”. Characteristics that make the “sadist” to think (in terms of costs/benefits) that those persons can be “suitable” victims from whom. This is they believe that, in response to the cruelty they inflicts to the victims, they can wait very few consequences!
Returning to the previous topic: on how the very interventions that change family life create the same situations of hardship and distress that social service workers, ex post and retrospectively, use for justifying their interventions, we must say that this phenomenon is well known in Social Psychology. It is called: the self-fulfilling prophecy and/or confirmation bias. A condition in which it is created the very hypnotized situation through the same inputs, stimuli and actions, which are made. Again, through the changes implemented.
In clinical psychology and in medicine is also well knows that the outcome of an assessment and/or evaluation depends, not only on the characteristics of the subjects examined, but also on the setting (the context in which the subjects are placed and inserted). Yet, the attitude / behaviours of the clinicians, whose actions can influence the responses received from them. Not only. It also depends from another factor: the diagnostic alliance. The latter affects the success of the diagnosis in the same way that the therapeutic alliance determinates the success of the therapy. At this point, it is an exercise in rhetoric to state that: any evaluation and/or assessment made by psychologists and/or social workers is devoid of any value, devoid of any validity and devoid of any reliability, where is done as above described. In other words, technically speaking, they are nonsense / nuts!
In other words, intellectual honesty and moral values are everything in psychology. This is due the very fact that the psychologists, like magicians, can pull out of the “hat” (alias: from the tests in his arsenals) whatever they want to get. This can be done by repeating those tests for several times. Yet, protracting their administration for long time, for exhausting hours. Furthermore, by choosing them as needed. In addition, by extracting from the clinical interview (which is actually the only way to conduct an assessment and/or evaluation worthy of the name) what they want. That is to say: what clinicians normally find is what they have expected to discover before to start to look for!
Do you remember Rosenhan’s experiments: Rosenhan D. L. (1973), On being sane in insane places, in Science, 179: 250 – 258; Rosenhan D. L. (1975), The contextual nature of psychiatric diagnosis, in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 84, 442 – 494. That is all Folks.
So, someone might ask: why do all this? The answer is simple: it’s part of the show, the staging, the theatre, the script, the “sleight of hand” that skilled illusionists show to the audience for creating an aura of scientific. Furthermore, it serves to justify high fees, pretending that they are justified by the “technical complexity” of the case! An expression, the latter, as much used and overused as much as it is become, nowadays, empty.
To sum up. On the one hand, I hope a profound reform of Juvenile Justice System as I indicated above. On the other hand, I hope that all families and minors, which have been involved in these events, can find again their lost harmony, affection and warmth of family life, that were stolen from them by the ideology of someone. Furthermore, I hope they may receive real support and to obtain real Justice with adequate compensations for their lives that have been irreversibly destroyed.
To all these families, to all these minors, with sincere heartfelt affection, a hug. This is all that I could do for you.
APPENDIX
Some epistemological observations on psychological theories and how they are misused and abused in the world of minors and in general. This, for giving some useful knowledge to the “victims” of all this.
For some time to now, psychology has been recognized as incapable of being a coherent science (Koch, 1969). This is due the fact that it is a discipline capable of producing only a great deal of pseudo-knowledge. A set of theories that range from mere “common sense” (in the best hypothesis) to pure “nonsense” (Evans, 1958; Wright, 1985; Brown & Curtis, 1987; Pepinsky & Jesilow, 1992; Kappeler, Blumberg, and Potter, 2000; Walker, 2005). A “nonsense” that has become one of the major players in Italian Juvenile Justice System. For these reasons, what is happening due the structure of juridical panels (as I have above described) does not surprising.
Nothing like psychology, due its “inconsistency”, can abuse and misuse (Foucault, 1972, 1976, 1978, 1980, 2001, 2005, 2006; Masson J., 1984; Szasz 1960; 1963; 1970; 1971a; 1972; 1974; 1990; 1992; 2003; 2004).
This happens for several reasons. Reasons that I will briefly outline below. I will sum up them as I wish to write a paper / article to this topic. This, to explain more deeply those mechanisms that allow what I have told above. In the meantime, for those people who wish to explore, furthermore, this topic, I suggest reading some of my previous publications: a) De Nova Supertitione. Some questions on the epistemological status of psychology, psychopathy and psychoanalysis. An essay, the present tense, is written only in Italian language; b) A Critical Study on How the Psychopathological Construct of Antisocial Personality and Psychopathy Has Imploded – The Implosion of the Construct.The latter is published in English and give an account of the incoherent structure of the psychopathological constructs that assume the logic form of: P and not-P. A logic form that can be extended to all the existing constructs and their applications.
To sum up, the resume can be this.
On the one hand, Psychological Theories are nothing more than artificial and contrived constructs. Constructs that are built by grouping together items and/or elements with varying degrees of correlation among them. Theoretically speaking, there were nothing wrong with this, unless, in social and psychological sciences, everything correlates with everything else (crud factor). A Truth, the latter, that is uncomfortable for many people who pretend to base their authority onto social and psychological science and so on. All psychological theories, indeed, are arbitrary creations, which are constructed with elements (items) that are gathered together, not at random, but at discretion, at convenience and/or for “political choice”, of those persons who have created them. Therefore, they are neither an objective view of Reality, not a knowledge and / or a description of the World, but an attempt to impose own worldviews on others’. These social constructs are mirrors, indeed, of the desires and/or wishes and/or the values (whether good or bad) of their creators. Nothing of different.
Psychological theories, therefore, do not describe Reality. They attempt / try simply to give an aura of pseudo-scientificity to an ideological view of Reality and / or a “political choices” that some people attempts to impose onto other’s. The psychological theories, indeed, instead of describing Reality, divide, dissect, reassemble, reinterpret and repaint, the World as they want and in such many ways to allow – to their creators – to represent the Universe as they want and / or as they need to serve their own interests and / or those of their groups / schools / lobbies / ideologies. Psychological theories, in other words, say nothing of true, but they allow psychologists to enact in the environment with an activity of sense-making à la Weick. Nothing is true, but just lies – in appearance “plausible” – to make people to believe and to make what illusionists want. In other words, psychologists create Iper-Reality a là Baudrillard to make persons acting as they wish.
Psychological theories are artefacts, models, formulated in a way that cannot be falsified. Yet, they are incapable of passing the test of validity of Logical Positivism. It is possible to show and prove that, all of them, are formulated in an incoherent manner as the example I quoted is evidence (Epis L., A Critical Study on How the Psychopathological Construct of Antisocial Personality and Psychopathy Has Imploded. The Implosion of the Construct). Thus, psychologists can use them for stating everything and the opposite of everything. Incoherence leads to inconsistency. In other words, the theoretical framework of the psychology is incoherent. It can be interpreted as somebody wants. Thus, from time to time, psychologist can use it to support, to give false evidence and to advantage, any interest and / or any ideological point of view, they want. To call this Scientia is, at least, reckless!
To summarize as much as possible, psychology presents itself as a “system of knowledge”, a discipline, which is “incoherent” and “incomplete”. Therefore, it is: both inconsistent, lacking coherence; and undecidability, lacking in completeness. The indecisiveness is the situation in which it is simply impossible to know: whether what psychology (or its practitioners) claims to be true or false, according to its “assumed theoretical framework”, is real true or false!
An example of this is done by the very fact that: in psychological science, no theory is either fully corroborated, or fully refuted. Thus, there is a logical system where opposed theories coexist and live together in an eternal limbo of uncertainty and incoherence. A limbo where the sorcerer’s apprentices take what they want to affirm, to support and to impose, their “whims”, their ideologies, onto others’. Like skilled magicians, they slip through their fingers those slippery constructs, gathered – from time to time – in that limbo as I have above told.
Thus, psychology is not a descriptive discipline of the world, but a normative one.
Psychology falls into empty sophistry, “sleight of hand” of illusionists, for deceiving people with magicians’ show. Everything can be supported, proved and argued, with the abracadabra of the interpretation.
However, to be completely honest, I must say something more to my readers to revealing every mystery of this “arcane discipline”.
Psychology is a set of different disciplines that are heterogeneous for epistemological status, “value” and dignity. On the one hand, we have cognitive, experimental and physiological, psychology. Again, neuroscience. All of them have the status of natural sciences. Therefore, their theories are descriptive. This means that their statements can be evaluated in terms of true and false, applying Wittgenstein’s atomic logic. This logic requires that each atomic element of the statement must correspond to an atomic element of Reality in a bi-univocal manner in order to be considered true. Furthermore, they cannot be used to justify any intervention and / or change of Reality, as they have no normative value.
In other words, all that descriptive sciences can tell us is whether minors suffer from medical-physiological disorders (not psychological and/or psychopathological). To be clear: dyslexia and/or dyscalculia and/or dysgraphia. They cannot tell us whether minors should stay with their families or be placed elsewhere.
Descriptive sciences are limited to photographing Reality without being able to say anything about how to intervene, to modify and/or to change, in it. There is, indeed, a dimensional boundary between a “neutral photography” of the Reality and an action on it. To move from observations to actions means to cross the “Rubicon” that separates the “domain of science” (which consists in the descriptive disciplines governed by formal logic) from the “domain of politics” (which consists in the normative disciplines governed by logic of values and/or New Rhetoric a là Perelman).
This is a very important point, to keep in mind, for understanding the “sleight of hand” of those sorcerer’s apprentices that, nowadays, are called psychologists and/or social workers and/or so on as I have mentioned above.
Only the normative “sciences” (Law; Ethics; Moral Philosophy; Moral Theology; Politics and far on) deal with interventions, actions and modifications, of Reality. Actions that are evaluated and /or assessed in terms of opportunity, interests, conveniences, political choices, ideology. Truth has no part at all in these kinds of decisions.
Among the psychological sciences, psychopathology falls entirely within the normative disciplines. Indeed, it is a tool for social control, standardization and homologation. The discursive practices of psychopathology are commands that are imposed – behind misleading grammatical forms à la Carnap – in disguise pseudo-descriptive statements. On the contrary, they are normative.
Mind you, I do not deny that one can be sad and/or distressed. It is normal to be so; it is part of life and personal growth. Here, I am stating something of quite different.
The proof of my statements about psychopathological language is done by the violation of Hume’s Law that psychopathology commits. Hume’s Law is an important criterion for distinguishing between what is empirical and what is not. The violation of Hume’s Law means to cross that “dimensional boundary” between the “Realm” of Formal Logic and that “Realm” of the Logic of Values and/or the New Rhetoric à la Perelman. While in the “former” assertions can be evaluated in terms of true or false and reasoning in terms of valid or invalid, in the “latter” this is not possible.
Within the normative domain, everything becomes “political opportunities and / or choices”, “rhetorical games” and ideological views of Reality. There is only discretional and / or arbitrary decisions based on interests. Everything is an attempt – done by someone – to impose something onto someone else. The Logic of Values and/or the New Rhetoric à la Perelman does not allow any control over the validity and/or reliability and/or the truth of what is claimed. Simply, like Sophists, the normative language is used to argue in rational way own points of view. This, to convince and/or to persuade interlocutors that own desires are better than theirs are!
Psychopathology violates Hume’s Law by shifting constantly from the descriptive dimension (e.g., a normal distribution) to the normative dimension (e.g., defining what is “normal” and/or ‘abnormal’). “Mental illness” is nothing, but mere divergences from the majority. A majority that often falls into being – nothing more; nothing less – a “group of sheep”. Again, it is mere divergences from the Single thought that: Power a là Foucault seeks to impose in favour of its own interests. In other words, psychopathology it mere divergence from “arbitrary norms” that a Power impose with its hegemony onto others. This why any kind of Regime uses psychopathology against dissidents. It does not matter the name and / or colour of the Regime. It is just a pattern of all of them.
Between the “descriptive” and “normative” sciences, there are also another area. An hybrid, ambiguous and fluid, wide area. This area mixes the descriptive and the normative dimensions together. Thus, it become slithery, subtly and very difficult, distinguishing between them. Moreover, it is quite impossible to recognize among Realities, which were before any modification and / or interventions and /or actions, and the effects of those actions onto those Realities. This means that it is quite difficult distinguish between cause and effect.
All the social sciences, included Soft Psychology, fall into this ambiguous area. Soft Psychology gathers all the other psychological disciplines. All, except one: psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis, in fact, is not part of psychology, but only of its history! Psychoanalysis do not have any scientific ground or dignity. It falls – at the best hypothesis – into the realm of the narrative. Thus, it is nothing, but semiotic drift. In other words, it is interpretation and re-interpretation of the world, in such a way to be self-validating and self-reinforcing, of the ideological assumptions that are assumed. Reality is looked thought, the “coloured glasses” of, the ideology expressed by certain authors’ ipse dixit. The interpretative dynamics and mechanisms, which are present, are the same of those that happen in certain sectarian ideological groups. A game of interpretation that make all the attempts of falsification failing. Therefore, at the end, boundaries between psychoanalysis and delirium are more linguistic matters than material / substantial!
Soft Psychology, as it has been having said, falls into a limbo of ambiguity, confusion and uncertainty, in which the Oedipus effect a là Popper, or the self-fulfilling prophecy, dominates and governs. This happens because, in these disciplines, meanwhile the observers describe Reality; they act and/or change Reality itself in the same time! Thus, distinguishing between real phenomena, in their own nature, and what has been caused by the actions done on them it is quite impossible.
This editorial has been very brief. However, I hope it has been useful for learning something that very few individuals would tell you. Nobody wants revealing the trickeries behind the illusionists’ shows. There is nothing wrong, unless these shows do not harm anyone (!) and remain only entertainment! Nevertheless, if they cross some limits, then something must to be said.
Before to say good-bye, three more advices like allegory / parable. First, avoid “betting” on the “three-card trick” with psychologists. Like all magicians, they cheat! Secondly, never take seriously, whatever they tell you. Neither they nor their “science” possesses any truth! Thirdly, when they “knock on your door” – like a “Jehovah’s Witness” to convert you to their beliefs and/or ideology – say just: “No, thank you. I am of another Faith”!
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Psychology: if you know it, you can avoid it.