I think this discussion needs to make a distinction between research psychology and clinical psychology (counseling). The research end can certainly establish replicable phenomena that defy common sense -- I'm thinking of Harlow's "wire monkey" experiments here, or the studies in which decent people can be induced to inflict pain on others through thought manipulation. These are valuable insights into how ultimately to resolve traumas in individuals, or deliver relief to traumatized groups, such as after Columbine, Aurora or Fort Hood shootings.
It's the one-on-one stuff in the small room with no witnesses that is a particularly ripe area for abuse, and that needs much more rigorous scrutiny.
Research paychology I had no really considered. I will allow as a portion of that field, probably a very small portion, is not fraud. Back in the 70s I had extensive 2nd and 3rd hand dealings with many psychologists and first hand also when I was attached to the Veterans’ hospital in Gainesville Florida. I had a number of friends going into the field at UF and met many practitioners. I watched a number of womens’ lives get totally skewed by psychs. It is the most fadbound of all the “sciences” and the for a few years was to diagnose any female that sought or was required to get counseling for any reason as a repressed lesbian who must act out her tendency. Much personal disaster came from that. In my own encounter with psychs in my role as VA patient I found them to be locked in the particular fads that were current and unable to even contemplated anything that determinedly did not comply with their templates. They became confused when the subject was able to actually discuss their points and did not answer questions “right”. I have met some psychologists since that period and my estimation of them has not risen.
It is not professional "abuse" because it is heart and soul of the trade. That is how things are done. Think to the nationwide fad of inventing repressed memories to put private and Christian daycare people in prison a whole swah of the population in Wennatchie Wa, for instance. Some of the most egregious work of that sort was done in Miami and some of those people are still in prison long long after everything was exposed as the BS it was.
Point taken.
I’d, however, point out that the way these clinicians arrive at something like the DSM IV isn’t what I’d call scientific.
I think they normalized homosexuality, for example, by voice vote. Not sure if that actually happened, but I’d heard it did.