The Governmental-University-Medical-Pharmaceutical Complex Explained

I have been recently writing a lot about what I have named the Governmental-University-Medical-Pharmaceutical Complex or GUMP for short. The first thing I want to stress is that GUMP is not a conspiracy theory because the different groups in this structure are not working in any secret coordinated way. Instead, they often share some of the same financial and social incentives as the complex is built from the bottom up. As I argue in Psychoanalyzing the Politics of the New Brain Sciences, most of the people promoting this ideology are not even aware of what they are doing, and so we need to re-think how we examine large, systemic issues.

At the heart of GUMP, we find the push of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists to enhance their compensation and status by taking on a medical model. The notion here is that if people think of mental problems as diseases, like diabetes, then they will see mental health experts in the same way they regard high-paid physicians. Part of this process requires eliminating Freudian theories that appear to be less scientific and valid. Another driving force is the way that insurance companies often dictate what types of treatment will be supported: This system requires a clear diagnosis and often a fast, efficient mode of therapy.

One way that the medicalization of mental problems was advanced concerns the notion that people simply suffer from chemical imbalances. In other words, their problems are not due to personal choices or social factors; instead, the cause of our issues and mental health problems can be traced back to genes, which themselves can be derived from evolutionary forces. The medical model, then, relies on biological determinism, and here is where neuroscience and evolutionary psychology enter the picture.

From the perspective of neuroscientific thinking, we are preprogrammed by natural selection to think and act in certain ways, and so the only way to fix a mental problem is to either do brain surgery or manipulate our neurotransmitters. Not only does this approach appear to be more scientific, but it also garners more prestige and funding. After all, pharmaceutical companies are reliant on convincing people that their problems are biological and therefore require a biological solution, and governmental agencies tend to fund research that follows this scientific explanation.

Evolutionary Psychology

While many defenders of neuroscience will stress that they do take into account some environmental factors, their theories and explanations tend to rely on a series of myths and metaphors. For instance, even when it is not stated directly, there is often an effort to see no difference between minds and brains on the one hand and humans and other animals on the other hand. These two fundamental metaphors serve to repress the differences between the physical and the mental since only humans think and therefore have minds. However, if you want to do experiments on animals to test a drug, then it is essential to erase what makes humans different, and this process requires eliminating thought.

Another key move is to argue that our minds are now shaped by decisions humans made hundreds of thousands of years ago when we lived in a hunter-gatherer culture. According to this theory, since it takes a long time for natural selection to weed out traits that do not help people reproduce, then the key to our current thoughts and actions relies on how we responded to particular problems a very long time ago. For example, the reason why we often dislike people on welfare is that our ancestors had to punish anyone who did not add to a limited supply of food. One of the problems with this theory is that it has to read the minds of people from the distant past. We also find here a projecting of current ideological reactions to welfare policies onto a fictionalized history, and yet these evolutionary psychologists like to claim that they are just doing impartial science, and they have no ideological perspective.

Rejection of Talk Therapy

I do not think that many neuroscientists or evolutionary psychologists are intentionally trying to repress Freud; rather, they have bought into a theory that leaves little room for culture or individual subjectivity. I also do not think that they are usually aware of the political implications of their explanations. It just so happens that the focus on biological causes tends to feed the Right-wing reaction to education, government, and the social sciences. After all, if you believe that our decisions are determined by our inherited genes, there is no reason to pour money into social programs seeking to help or improve other people. Instead of better policies or education, what we need is better drugs and perhaps greater rewards for the naturally talented. This type of evolutionary thinking also can lead to the idea that men are simply born to be leaders and some races are just more gifted and intelligent.

This new mode of Social Darwinism is much more subtle and indirect than past forms, which in some ways makes it even more pernicious since it is taught in schools, funded by governments, and promoted by respected doctors. Being a major cause of the opiate epidemic and the college campus mental health crisis, GUMP reflects both the underlying pursuit of the profit motive and the desire to treat social issues as personal mental health problems. Furthermore, GUMP not only feeds a Right-wing mentality, but it also undermines psychoanalysis and the promotion of talk therapy for many mental issues. 

My intention here is not to say that biology does not matter or that some people do not need medication—my main argument is that this medical model crowds out alternative explanations and treatments. Of course, many people buy into it because it presents clear causes with easy responses. GUMP also provides a source of identity and meaning to people who do not know why they are suffering. As an uncoordinated conspiracy of incentives, it is hard to critique or dismantle, and many of the people promoting GUMP are not even aware of what they are doing. In fact, this whole complex is now being heightened by advertisements for drugs and the circulation of diagnostic categories and medical solutions on social media.