Marxist Psychology Society and Human Behavior

QUESTION: Marxist Psychology – Society and Human Behavior

ANSWER:

In Marxist psychology, society—through speech—affects our behavior. Nahem explains further, “Most decisive in its influence on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior,” says Nahem, “is society and social relations....Human beings are distinguished from animals by their social labor, their social communication, their social groupings, by their social acquisition and use of language, and by their involvement in the ideas, attitudes, morality and behavior of their society.”¹ According to A.R. Luria, we long for this type of societal influence and create society so as to produce more external stimuli.²

Marxist Psychology – A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange(a 1971 Best Picture Oscar winning film) was a response to B.F. Skinner’s theories of behaviorism. The movie shows a brutal criminal being subjected to a conditioning program that produces a violent physical reaction at the mere thought of harming another person. After a demonstration of the therapy’s effectiveness, the following dialogue takes place between the prison warden and an Anglican clergyman, who opens the scene. “Choice! The boy has no real choice! Has he? Self-interest! The fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement! Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.” The warden answers: “Padre, these are subtleties! We’re not concerned with motives for the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons! He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek! Ready to be crucified rather than crucify....The point is that it works!”

Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book,Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews(Rev. 2^nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

¹ Nahem, Psychology and Psychiatry Today, 45, quoting Marx’s “The Third Thesis on Feuerbach,” 84. ² A. R. Luria, The Nature of Human Conflicts, (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1960), 401-2.