Anti-Intellectualism and the Fracking of Psychology

The American Psychological Association (APA) Working Group’s Proactive Approach and Pedagogical Statement represent good first steps in helping graduate programs manage threats to professional training imposed by “conscience clause legislation.” But much heavier lifting is needed if the discipline hopes to fend off far greater threats to its legitimacy imposed by anti-intellectualism broadly. I suggest that this objective can be accomplished through establishing statewide psychology collaboratives comprising health service psychology (HSP) and non-HSP psychologists, jointly mobilized by APA and the Association for Psychological Science, who should work with state legislatures, through existing infrastructures found in state psychological associations, to implement wholesale foundational changes in psychology education from elementary school through graduate school, through political reformation and the branding of psychology.