Based Camp - Based Camp： Has Psychology Become a Cult？

00:00:00.000 I was walking behind these three women and one of the women turns to one of the other 1.00

00:00:04.080 women and goes, I would never date a guy who's not seeing a psychologist.

00:00:09.640 And then all of the other women were like, yes, I agree.

00:00:14.080 And what I realized is that their psychologists had incepted into all three of these women

00:00:20.420 independently and enough, and this is a common enough thing that apparently like women can 1.00

00:00:25.180 just say this was in certain social circles and assume that everyone will have the same

00:00:28.640 brainwashing, that you cannot be mentally healthy without seeing a psychologist.

00:00:33.040 That was what was implied was what was being said.

00:00:37.760 That is the highest horror of psychologically mispractice that a like sane thinking psychologist

00:00:48.480 could imagine, that a psychologist had convinced them of largely two things.

00:00:53.540 One is you can't be psychologically healthy without seeing a psychologist.

00:00:57.120 And then two is you can't be psychologically healthy without continuing to see a psychologist.

00:01:02.940 They were creating dependency in their patients to get a recurring stream of revenue.

00:01:09.600 Now, what this cult of psychology does is people go to a psychologist with a problem and they

00:01:16.300 then say, oh, that problem is likely tied to a trauma early in your life.

00:01:22.720 Let's determine what this trauma is.

00:01:26.000 And then we can constantly meet about this trauma because if you don't have me acting as a constant

00:01:31.780 bulwark against this trauma, then it will fall upon you and you won't be able to live a mentally

00:01:38.360 healthy life.

00:01:39.620 And that's dependency.

00:01:41.020 This is actually the mechanisms that Scientologists would use.

00:01:44.260 They would do a theon reading and they would ask you questions about things like your parents or other

00:01:48.300 things that happened early in your life and then they would say, ah, you have some trauma

00:01:53.680 with your mom or your trauma with your dad.

00:01:56.180 And that's essentially what this cult of psychology is doing, which is interesting to me that you

00:02:00.960 have this one field that is so vilified for milking people from their money and creating

00:02:05.260 dependency, which is Scientology.

00:02:06.880 And then you have this other field, which Scientology labels as like the highest evil, which is

00:02:11.620 psychologists.

00:02:12.200 But in a way, it's because they're competing for the same customers using the same mechanisms.

00:02:18.540 Oh, wow.

00:02:19.420 That's why there is this fight here.

00:02:22.660 Would you like to know more?

00:02:24.380 Hello, gorgeous.

00:02:25.460 Hello, Simone. 0.69

00:02:26.440 It's wonderful to be here with you today.

00:02:27.680 What are we talking about?

00:02:29.140 Psychology.

00:02:30.400 Are you ready?

00:02:31.720 So people may not know this.

00:02:33.340 I started my early career in neuroscience and psychology.

00:02:36.040 So yes, I did some early work in brain-computer interface.

00:02:41.840 But before that, I was a psychologist who focused on schizophrenia and stuff like that,

00:02:46.960 but also more general psychology stuff.

00:02:50.160 And recently, I have become horrified and very disappointed in the field because it seems

00:02:58.900 to be turning into a cult.

00:03:00.120 And I mean that very literally and as terrifyingly as it could possibly be interpreted.

00:03:07.620 So to people who don't know this about psychology, one of the things that all young psychologists

00:03:13.040 are taught about when you're just starting out in psychology is the horror of the fad that

00:03:19.980 was hypnosis.

00:03:21.680 Because it turns out that when somebody comes to you and you're in a position of authority

00:03:28.220 over them, it is very easy to implant memories in their mind using specific procedures.

00:03:35.920 Many of those look like hypnosis, but they also look like other things.

00:03:39.420 This is one of these big things that they always teach you early in psychology.

00:03:43.040 It's that memories are not actually that great a predictor of whether or not something actually

00:03:47.920 happened the way it's being remembered happened.

00:03:49.860 And this is all important for court psychologists and stuff like that.

00:03:53.220 But the real tragedy comes when people go to a psychologist to try to work out some problem

00:03:58.960 they have.

00:04:00.300 And then that psychologist, through mechanisms that we now know can implant memories in a

00:04:06.480 person's mind, which is hypnosis, implant a bunch of memories of trauma in someone's

00:04:11.820 mind, and then use those memories of trauma to justify why that person is seeing a psychologist.

00:04:17.660 And then, historically, there were many cases of using those memories of trauma to cut the

00:04:23.340 person off from people who would have broken them out of the cult, gotten them away from

00:04:26.880 the psychologist.

00:04:27.920 There's the famous case of a young girl who accused her father of rape, which it seems

00:04:32.420 he almost certainly did not do.

00:04:34.680 And yet he went to trial over this and everything, really had damage to his life.

00:04:38.340 And when I'm doing editing, I'll find the name of the case and put it on screen here because

00:04:42.300 it's this really heartbreaking case of how easy it is to accidentally brainwash someone

00:04:48.920 if they come to you as a psychologist.

00:04:51.980 And so there was this moment not too long ago where I was in a room of really high profile

00:04:57.220 people.

00:04:57.680 I'm talking about like top level people in our society, controlling things and stuff like

00:05:02.360 that.

00:05:02.560 And I was walking behind these three women and one of the women turns to one of the other 1.00

00:05:06.680 women and goes, I would never date a guy who's not seeing a psychologist.

00:05:11.080 And then all of the other women were like, mm-hmm, yes, I agree. 0.98

00:05:16.680 And what I realized is that their psychologists had incepted into all three of these women

00:05:23.020 independently and enough, and this is a common enough thing that apparently like women can 1.00

00:05:27.780 just say this was in certain social circles and assume that everyone will have the same

00:05:31.240 brainwashing, that you cannot be mentally healthy without seeing a psychologist.

00:05:36.180 That was what was implied was what was being said.

00:05:39.240 That is the highest horror of psychologically mispractice that a like sane thinking psychologist

00:05:51.100 could imagine.

00:05:52.320 That a psychologist had convinced them of largely two things.

00:05:56.160 One is you can't be psychologically healthy without seeing a psychologist.

00:06:00.200 And then two is you can't be psychologically healthy without continuing to see a psychologist.

00:06:05.120 They were creating dependency in their patients to get a recurring stream of revenue.

00:06:12.280 This doesn't come as a surprise, right?

00:06:13.700 Because when we talk about governance and we talk about what makes people do what they're

00:06:18.340 doing, when you have a career in which you maintain clients and have repeat clients because

00:06:26.260 they continue to need your services, any psycho psychologist, psychotherapist, therapist, whatever

00:06:32.180 counselor who is really good at their job, that is to say, helping people not need counseling

00:06:38.020 or therapy or psychoanalysis or whatever anymore.

00:06:40.640 If you're really good at your job, you lose your customers.

00:06:44.680 If you are really good at creating dependency and reinforcing someone's mental struggles, then

00:06:50.660 you have a thriving career and customer base, especially if they think that they need you

00:06:55.520 and that you are somehow helping even while you're secretly or subconsciously making things

00:06:59.520 worse.

00:07:00.640 So there's this huge adverse incentive, one that we also really complain about in the

00:07:04.160 nonprofit world, where the nonprofits that tend to stick around and survive are those which

00:07:10.180 raise money effectively, not which solve their problem effectively.

00:07:14.860 So I guess we're seeing the same problem in psychology as we are in the world of nonprofits, which

00:07:19.280 is the successful psychologists are those that are very good at getting clients dependent

00:07:24.680 on them, correct?

00:07:25.320 Yeah, so I think that this is a really critical point that you've made, Simone, which is I

00:07:29.860 don't think that anyone has really gone into this or that many people have gone into this

00:07:33.800 with nefarious intentions, nor do I think it's a problem in how psychologists are taught

00:07:38.160 because I was warned against this going into psychology.

00:07:41.320 The problem is that if you're a good psychologist, you earn less money.

00:07:44.800 If you have less money, you have less room for advertising, less money for advertising,

00:07:48.880 less money for client acquisition, and you have lower margins, which mean you can get less

00:07:53.420 high profile clients often.

00:07:55.160 So really what you're seeing, and I think the reason you see this in the quote unquote

00:07:58.280 elite levels of psychology more than I think the general psychological audience, although

00:08:02.700 I don't know how widespread this practice is, is because the people who either subconsciously

00:08:08.400 or accidentally fall into this practice of accidentally brainwashing their patients into thinking

00:08:13.040 they need a psychologist constantly economically outcompete the psychologists who aren't doing this

00:08:18.680 practice.

00:08:19.280 And I think that this is one of those things where no one is acting nefariously.

00:08:23.440 Nobody went into this saying, I want to incept people with the idea that they can't be mentally

00:08:29.340 healthy without one, continuing to see me, or two, that they should cut themselves off from

00:08:33.720 everyone who's not seeing a psychologist in terms of their sort of personal emotional life.

00:08:38.120 But that's also a really interesting thing.

00:08:40.100 If psychologists tell people, also the people who you are engaged with in your life need

00:08:45.940 to see a psychologist, that's additional customers, right?

00:08:49.860 If it's, oh, well, you should stop interacting with your parents unless they're also seeing

00:08:53.880 a psychologist, by the way, here's my card.

00:08:56.220 By the way, you shouldn't date people unless they're also seeing a psychologist, by the way,

00:09:01.020 here's my card.

00:09:01.920 And so there's many elements of how this sort of cult accidentally can evolve.

00:09:06.520 And I think that some psychologists have some of these practices and not others.

00:09:10.900 And some psychologists, I'm not saying all psychologists are part of this cult movement.

00:09:13.940 What I'm saying is that it does exist within the psychology movement.

00:09:16.600 And even when I talk to people with a psychology background who aren't like caught up in this,

00:09:19.660 they're like, oh God, yeah, I've definitely seen that.

00:09:21.740 And it's really scary.

00:09:22.820 So let's talk about the way that psychology is generally supposed to work when you go to

00:09:27.240 see a psychologist.

00:09:28.340 And then we can contrast that with the way you know you're dealing with probably a bad psychologist

00:09:33.900 or a psychologist who is creating dependency.

00:09:35.980 Typically, you go to a psychologist and you have some issue.

00:09:41.160 And what they are supposed to do is help you rewrite your internal self-narrative so that

00:09:47.740 thing that is an issue is either not an issue or not debilitating to your daily life.

00:09:53.860 That is what a good psychologist does.

00:09:56.520 You might go to a psychologist believing that you have some sort of a crippling problem that

00:10:01.300 you can't get out of.

00:10:02.120 And they work with you to not have a crippling problem that you can't get out of and not

00:10:06.000 have to see a psychologist anymore.

00:10:07.560 Now, what a quote unquote evil psychologist does, this cult of psychology does, is people

00:10:12.760 go to a psychologist with a problem.

00:10:14.620 And they then say, oh, that problem is likely tied to a trauma early in your life.

00:10:23.420 Let's determine what this trauma is.

00:10:26.080 And then we can constantly meet about this trauma because if you don't have me acting as

00:10:31.540 a constant bulwark against this trauma, then it will fall upon you and you won't be able

00:10:37.940 to live a mentally healthy life.

00:10:39.380 And that's dependency because they're saying without me acting as this sort of bulwark.

00:10:44.320 And what is really fascinating is when I was younger, I was interested in joining cults.

00:10:48.380 So like not, I didn't want to join a cult.

00:10:50.700 I was interested in how people could be convinced to believe things.

00:10:53.860 It seemed obviously not true to me.

00:10:56.320 And one of the things I did is I went to a number of like psychology recruitment sessions,

00:11:00.520 not psychology, Scientology.

00:11:01.740 Sorry, the Freudian slip of the tongue there.

00:11:04.400 I went to Scientology recruitment sessions.

00:11:07.120 And this is actually the mechanisms that Scientologists would use.

00:11:10.500 They would do a Thean reading and they would ask you questions about things like your parents

00:11:14.200 or something like that or other things that happened early in your life.

00:11:17.980 And then the Thean reading is basically a galvanic spin response.

00:11:20.660 So they could tell when you would get nervous.

00:11:22.660 And then they would say, ah, you have some trauma with your mom or your trauma with your dad,

00:11:28.200 depending on how you reacted galvanic spin response wise to their questions around this

00:11:32.980 stuff.

00:11:33.680 And that's essentially what this cult of psychology is doing, which is interesting to me that you

00:11:38.440 have this one field that is so vilified for milking people from their money and creating

00:11:42.740 dependency, which is Scientology.

00:11:44.460 And then you have this other field, which Scientology labels as like the highest evil, which is psychologists.

00:11:50.280 But in a way, it's because they're competing for the same customers using the same mechanisms.

00:11:55.760 Oh, wow.

00:11:56.960 Why there is this fight here.

00:12:00.100 And interesting, when Scientology evolves, that was during one of the periods where this

00:12:03.760 is one of those really interesting things.

00:12:04.980 So if you go back to Christian science, a lot of people are like, oh, isn't that ridiculous

00:12:08.740 that they don't want to use modern medicine?

00:12:10.740 However, actually, if you look at the time period when Christian science evolved, modern

00:12:14.740 medicine might have actually lowered life expectancy because that was back when they were doing

00:12:18.800 like leeches and bone cuttings and everything.

00:12:21.840 And so it actually made sense during that time.

00:12:23.680 If you look at during the early evolution of Scientology, this was happening during the

00:12:28.380 hypnotherapy epidemic.

00:12:29.940 So they might have actually had a point that there are mechanisms that was actually interesting

00:12:34.920 is their mechanisms might have been prescient of the direction psychology was going to

00:12:40.600 go 30, 40 years in the future, which is just fascinating to me that we now see them as evil.

00:12:48.380 And yet they were just creating dependency in the same way psychologists do.

00:12:52.000 Now, of course, they didn't go as far.

00:12:53.480 And so what psychologists have that the Scientologists didn't have was certain regulatory

00:12:57.120 organizations, which can disbar them and stuff like that so that they couldn't go quite as

00:13:01.740 far with molesting people or something or creating essential slaves or any of the other things

00:13:08.560 that, of course, for legal reasons, I'm not saying Scientology has ever done any of these

00:13:13.840 things. But what I'm saying is that the tech, if they might, because it's such a centralized

00:13:19.280 organization, they wouldn't have the same system for preventing these kinds of extreme levels of

00:13:24.460 abuse. But that doesn't mean that the core techniques that they're using aren't the same

00:13:28.700 techniques that the field of psychology had allowed itself or has allowed itself to drift into.

00:13:35.400 And this terrifies me.

00:13:37.160 Let me add another layer of complexity, though, because as much as this is terrifying and as

00:13:41.380 much as we frame this as like people unknowingly entering into these relationships or dependency

00:13:46.000 is created and then turned into victims, part of me wonders if this is an open secret because

00:13:52.160 we've had this conversation with friends.

00:13:54.160 We've had this conversation with people, quite frankly, because we find it interesting.

00:13:57.400 And we've met many people who have undergone really hard mental periods of their lives.

00:14:03.760 Most people have, I think, who have ended up in dependent relationships with therapists and just

00:14:09.080 flat out told us, yeah, I see a therapist a couple of times a week. It's gotten to the point where my

00:14:14.600 insurance doesn't accept them anymore. I'm paying out of pocket for this. So this is obviously a big

00:14:18.820 investment. I know that this is a dependent relationship, but also it's been a big help for me.

00:14:26.440 And even though I know that this is not right, I need this.

00:14:30.620 This is one of the problems with psychological biases is you can know you have a psychological

00:14:34.060 bias and it doesn't help you get out of it. You can know that you're in a cult or in a dependent 1.00

00:14:38.840 relationship, but the psychologist has effectively created this dependency. You can't easily leave

00:14:44.260 it. That's one of the problems. You essentially need cult deprogramming to get out of this.

00:14:48.100 Does such a thing exist? What can we say? What can we say to our friends who are in those positions

00:14:52.580 or if someone's watching this video and they're like, oh, wait, yeah, I am in a codependent

00:14:58.100 relationship. I'm paying out of pocket for someone. This is really, it's not sustainable.

00:15:02.820 And obviously my problem's not going away, right? Like I still have crippling anxiety or this terrible

00:15:07.560 traumatic thing that's interrupting my life. What would you say to them then? There is no cult

00:15:11.800 deprogramming for therapists.

00:15:13.140 I think that that's the key is solving it yourself. If you don't, if whenever you give

00:15:18.000 your mind, your mental state to another person, you create enormous personal vulnerability.

00:15:24.660 And so yes, it's harder to do it on your own, but the truth is that the things that the psychologists

00:15:30.120 are taught about how to engage with someone are just not that complex. They're going to say they

00:15:35.340 are, they really aren't. It's just personal narrative building stuff, which you can read about

00:15:39.780 in the pragmatist guide to life. But if you aren't interested in that, then try to find another

00:15:45.220 psychologist, interview them early on, like you should a psychologist. And I would say the big

00:15:49.320 red flag is the more psychologists is focused on the concept of trauma, especially trauma as an

00:15:54.000 immutable thing is not a goal to get over. Then they are likely on the evil side or the dependency

00:15:59.440 creating side. If they are focused on either not focused on trauma or their focus on trauma is

00:16:04.540 helping you overcome the trauma entirely, then they are likely more likely to be on the positive

00:16:10.500 side. But what's interesting is I've noticed that these ideas that have been incepted into people

00:16:16.220 have worked their way in a way into mainstream progressive politics, where people now define

00:16:21.780 themselves by their traumas, and they see them as like a major part of their self identity. And I think

00:16:28.240 what's really interesting is other religious movements used to have defenses against this. And this is

00:16:33.900 one of the things we talk about in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, is that a lot of

00:16:37.840 religious movements essentially had roles that were like psychologists. I mean, of course they did,

00:16:42.440 right? This isn't a new need for people to some extent within the Jewish community, like that's what

00:16:46.500 your rabbi would do. And in the Mormon community, you know, you have solutions to this. And within these

00:16:50.620 communities, because they didn't use psychologists to recruit people in the way that Scientologists did,

00:16:54.860 they were genuinely interested in mental health. And one of the best mental health focused

00:17:00.320 communities or systems that evolved to do this that I just have endless admiration for is the

00:17:06.360 Catholic system. So what the Catholic system is the confession system. What it allows you to do

00:17:13.480 is go to someone, say, this is something bad I've done, or this is something I've done that is causing

00:17:21.060 mental trouble for me or something like that. And what they don't say very importantly is no,

00:17:26.380 that thing wasn't actually bad. They don't say, oh no, you're just automatically forgiven for it,

00:17:31.620 which is what the Bible says, you know, as you repent, but it's actually a better system than even

00:17:36.080 what the, I think from a psychological standpoint, is to say, yes, what you did is bad. Here is a concrete

00:17:42.160 list of things you can do to atone for the bad thing you did. So it's an acknowledgement of the

00:17:50.180 badness and then creating a self-narrative within the person that they can overcome that through

00:17:54.820 following this list of things. Now, of course, they're also creating dependency to the church

00:17:58.880 to some extent, right? Oh, you need to keep going every time you do a bad thing. But what's really

00:18:04.140 admirable about the system they created is it's a very difficult system to abuse either accidentally

00:18:11.320 or on purpose. The pseudo anonymity of the system makes it harder for a person to form a dependency on a

00:18:18.720 single individual. The high level of ethics around not talking about, and this is like a really

00:18:24.500 important thing for Catholic priests, you cannot say what was told to you in confession, even if it 0.73

00:18:28.320 can save someone's life or prevent a murder, which is actually higher than the level of trust you have

00:18:33.720 with your psychologist. If you go to a psychologist and you say something that suggests that you could

00:18:38.220 kill someone else or self-harm, they actually have a duty to report you like serious, like you're at

00:18:42.900 risk of your own life, where the Catholic priest has a higher level of trust in that. And even if you

00:18:48.840 have a dumb person who could accidentally give a person bad advice, they're actually working within a fairly 0.97

00:18:53.700 narrow range of answers they can give you. And it's really hard for them to give an answer that 0.98

00:18:58.940 creates that much psychological damage. So there are mechanisms for better systems in this. The

00:19:06.260 problem is that these mechanisms aren't available to the masses or to the secular or like religiously

00:19:14.260 derived masses that are no longer in these traditions that offer services like this.

00:19:19.700 So I know you don't really like Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, because what it has

00:19:25.900 become is actually quite corrupted and it has various adverse incentives at play.

00:19:30.380 It's another example of an organization that was started with good intent, but essentially has

00:19:33.820 become a cult, but that's for a different video.

00:19:35.520 Right. That's for a different video.

00:19:36.660 And not all of it, factions of it.

00:19:38.240 I do want to ask you about their buddy system. You know, that you, when you go into AA, there's a lot of

00:19:43.840 stuff that is whatever, but one of the things that you do have rather than a therapist, rather than a

00:19:49.160 priest that you confess to, rather than a centralized authority, you just have another one of the people

00:19:54.080 of this group who shares your struggle being your, your accountability buddy. And it seems like

00:20:00.820 sometimes these people have, they've been through it more than you have, but at least, so they're more

00:20:04.260 advanced. Like what are they really doing? They're preventing you from leaving AA. You could say

00:20:08.860 they're preventing you from getting back on alcohol, but just as much of preventing you from getting

00:20:12.740 back on alcohol, they consider a failure scenario, two things, you getting back on alcohol or you

00:20:20.060 leaving AA.

00:20:20.900 What are your thoughts on, we'll say, take a step aside here. This is where the concept of a dry drunk

00:20:26.060 within AA comes from. If anybody doesn't believe me, look up this concept. Many people in the cult

00:20:31.220 version of AA believe that quitting alcohol through a mechanism other than AA is as bad as

00:20:37.440 continuing to be an alcoholic, which to me shows the point is staying in AA. It's not getting off

00:20:43.780 alcohol, which is what I mean when I say this is a cult and it's not all of AA and the same way,

00:20:48.760 it's not all psychologists, but the buddy system.

00:20:51.660 Let's yeah, let's return to mechanisms that people can turn to if they don't turn to a therapist,

00:20:56.820 if they're not Catholic and they don't want to go to confession. Do you think a buddy system,

00:21:01.480 so someone maybe who's been through the same thing that you have or someone that you really

00:21:05.300 trust as a friend is a good alternative to just figuring it out by yourself? Because I don't

00:21:09.900 think everyone's really ready for that.

00:21:11.520 Just a side note, as somebody who really studied cults and loves cults,

00:21:15.440 buddy systems are really common in cults. It's one of the most common systems. We love Mormons,

00:21:20.040 we'll have a video on them in the future, but Mormons do to an extent use a buddy system during a

00:21:23.920 person's mission trip to prevent them from deconverting so that they have somebody they

00:21:28.640 can turn to constantly, but that also is supervising them to an extent. And when you look

00:21:34.420 at cults, actually, one of the reasons why cults historically use buddy systems is for converting

00:21:38.780 people. What some cults found, and there's some great research on that was actually done by the

00:21:42.880 cults themselves because they kept records. I think the Moonies were the ones who did this,

00:21:46.840 is it was never approached somebody as an individual because they'll think that it's like a sexual thing or

00:21:51.440 like you're hitting on them or something or like it's weird. But if you approach them with a buddy,

00:21:56.840 which is the smallest group you can do this with, they have a much higher chance of not being afraid

00:22:02.160 of you and not seeing you as threatening. So yes, buddy system is actually often a sign that you're

00:22:07.600 joining a cult. And I need to stress, I don't think Mormonism is a cult. Just the buddy system is there to

00:22:12.620 prevent deconversion. But to the point that you were making, can a buddy system be good? It may be good,

00:22:19.320 but I really think the ultimate buddy system is a spouse. And what you really should have is the

00:22:25.120 type of spouse that can help you work through these things for yourself, which Simone does for me all

00:22:30.160 the time. I've been brainwashed by my spouse. That's really what I'm saying here. I've been

00:22:36.580 brainwashed into just having absolute mental dependency on my spouse.

00:22:40.240 What I, but no, what I hear you saying is buddy systems are a viable therapy.

00:22:47.520 Isn't that what someone who had brainwashed me would say?

00:22:51.380 No, I know, but it's buddy systems may work, but they're not a terribly good system.

00:22:56.360 Well, there, I think a buddy system is a really good system if you're trying to opt into someone's

00:23:01.600 lifestyle or, or solution. So if you think.

00:23:05.140 If the buddy system is managed by an organization that you can have total trust has your best interest

00:23:11.920 at heart.

00:23:12.480 I'm referring to a friend. I'm referring to a spouse. I'm referring to a mentor. I'm not

00:23:16.380 referring to anything that's organizationally related. I'm referring to the dynamic of someone

00:23:20.280 that you trust helping you work through something.

00:23:23.180 Well, then you better have total trust in them because you know what, that buddy, there's a reason

00:23:27.360 why there's all these rules against sleeping with your psychologist and stuff like that.

00:23:30.480 If you're a female and that buddy's a male, they're probably going to try to sleep with you 1.00

00:23:33.420 unless you have like enormous trust in them or vice versa. No, this is how people create

00:23:36.980 dependency. This is how I understand if you have total trust in the person you're going

00:23:41.940 with in this buddy system. Great. But the problem is that you can often misjudge someone. And when

00:23:48.680 you use someone to be this kind of sounding board, you outsource the keys to your mental kingdom to

00:23:55.360 someone else, which puts you in a position of enormous mental vulnerability.

00:23:59.600 But Malcolm, I think what you're missing is when people are severely depressed, when people

00:24:03.160 are severely traumatized, they may not have to be solved with pharmacological intervention

00:24:09.120 and potentially even more extreme interventions like, um, uh, electroshock therapy works really

00:24:15.720 well for extreme depression. There are solutions to the more extreme psychological problems.

00:24:21.240 This is same for things like schizophrenia and stuff like that, but those aren't psychologist

00:24:25.880 problems. Those are psychiatrist problems. It's a different fricking degree. Okay. It's a

00:24:33.760 different, it's a completely different level. One prescribes things and the other doesn't go to the

00:24:39.000 one that prescribes things. If that's what you're looking for, if you're looking for solutions that you

00:24:43.160 can't come to yourself or you can't come to with a buddy. And I do agree a buddy. All I'm doing is

00:24:48.000 highlighting the importance of understanding that if you go to a buddy, trust that buddy, but the truth

00:24:54.600 that you could probably trust a buddy better than you can, a random psychologist. That is true. Like

00:24:58.920 you, the only thing you really have faith that the psychologist isn't going to do is they're likely

00:25:04.280 not, or less likely going to do something that's just absolutely egregious to you, but they are much

00:25:10.520 more likely to just create a generic dependency. Whereas a buddy may have a slightly higher probability

00:25:15.800 of doing something absolutely egregious, but a much lower probability of creating general dependency.

00:25:20.080 So long as you prepped them with framing for this, which the Fragment has guided to life,

00:25:25.840 which is our shortest book by far and sells for 99 cents and all the profits go to charity.

00:25:30.080 So like we created it actually, when we wrote that book, it was to try to create an alternative to CBT.

00:25:35.580 CBT is actually a great system. We just wanted an alternative that people with less training could

00:25:40.300 use was more reliability. CBT standing for cognitive behavioral therapy.

00:25:44.520 But it was originally meant to be a, if then training manual for psychologists. And actually

00:25:50.540 an AI was going to be trained on it to become a psychologist. One AI team reached out to us after

00:25:54.580 reading it. If you read it and you're like, this sounds like a psychologist training manual,

00:25:58.580 that's actually the way it was written. And so it could actually help you in that scenario

00:26:02.920 to prevent the more extreme ways you might engage with something, but then also just self-reflection

00:26:09.040 with this very simple concept. And I'll present the concept to you.

00:26:12.520 You have an internal self-narrative, who you are, what your role is in the world,

00:26:17.700 what events have caused you trauma, how you relate to those trauma. This is all part of

00:26:21.880 your self-narrative. It's a narrative you tell yourself. The core goal of this person you're

00:26:26.760 going to is for you to go to them, say, this is how I would like to rewrite my self-narrative,

00:26:31.920 or this is my self-narrative today. And here's how it's causing me problems. And to work with you

00:26:36.580 in rewriting that self-narrative, which is actually self-narratives are incredibly malleable. Even though

00:26:42.280 we pretend in society today, like they are this immutable part of who we are, they are not.

00:26:47.100 It's very, like research shows are very malleable. So you're going to this person to rewrite your

00:26:52.220 self-narrative into one that is less damaging to your daily life or your goals for who you want

00:26:57.720 to be or yourself. And that's just a very doable thing. You don't need to read the book.

00:27:01.140 Just go into it with that concept while also understanding that this person who's rewriting

00:27:05.360 yourself narrative could rewrite it to say, you absolutely need to keep seeing me and giving me

00:27:11.900 money and give me all your money and then do all these things I tell you to do, or you will never

00:27:16.960 be mentally healthy. And that's the danger. So that's the red flag to look for. Speaking of red flags,

00:27:23.180 we have to go get our kids from daycare. So let's go run, run, run, get that. And I will start dinner.

00:27:29.660 I love you so much, Malcolm. I'll see you soon.

Based Camp - May 28, 2023

Based Camp： Has Psychology Become a Cult？

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