Is psychology a science or a political and financial tool of influence?

There was a piece today on "conversion therapies" of homosexuals in South Carolina - something that was prohibited by the government in New York.

Psychology - that is used extensively and often, as the only "evidence" in CPS proceedings - appears to be not a science, but a tool. 

Not such a long time ago, when families desired to get rid of a woman suffering from a postnatal depression, or who were doing what people did not understand and preferred to label as "witchcraft", or lock up heiresses to use their fortune, they were sent to "Bedlam", insane asylums, because criticizing men were deemed as a sign of insanity. 

Psychology is now used as a sword, and the word of psychologist is uncritically accepted in awarding custody of children and in separating families, where psychologists (paid by CPS) "find", predictably, for CPS and in favor of separation of children from families. 

Of course, when that same separation of children from families can be used to bash Trump, then psychologists change course and say that separation of children from adults who claim to be their parents when illegally crossing the U.S. border will bring irreparable harm to children. 

There is also the recent scandal with the American Psychological Association pronouncing pedophilia as a "sexual orientation".

After public protests the APA changed its "scientific" pronouncement to a "mental health disorder" - creating even  worse problem.

I have the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), where pedophilia is deemed such a disorder.

Yet, every person convicted of sex crimes against children is then presumed sick and subjected to "sex offender treatment", a large industry in the United States - and that includes "treating" children who engaged in experimenting as "sex offenders". 

Which creates a problem - because if a person is sick, he might not be criminally responsible for his actions.  And, if he is criminally responsible, he is not sick.  

So, psychologists, while playing a crucial role in convictions for sex crimes and making "treating" sex offenders (while agreeing that pedophilia "is not curable") into a huge multi-million dollar industry - do not really know whether it is a sexual orientation, a disease, or just a deliberate criminal proclivity.

As to changing the label on pedophilia from sexual orientation to a mental health disorder, the American Psychological Association shot itself in the foot, practically confirming that clinical psychology has nothing to do with science.

Have you ever seen demonstration against a manual how to diagnose, let's say, a heart attack?  Cancer?  Infections? Diabetes?

And approaches to diagnosing medical conditions changed by doctors because of public protests?

And here comes the latest point of public protests - the so-called "gay conversion therapy". 

It has long been pointed out that homosexuality has been rendered a sin, a crime, a disease, then not a crime, and after that - "voted" to be not a disease based on political influences and not on evidence.

The change came quickly and dramatically.

Before 2003 homosexuality was a crime.

After 2003, Lawrence v Texas decided by the U.S. Supreme Court - it was no longer a crime.

Then, gay marriage was allowed in some states.

In 2011 psychologists "decided" that now it is embarrassing to call homosexuality a mental heath disorder and removed that from the DSM.

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a precedent, "made law" (that court is not allowed by the U.S. Constitution to make law, but it still did) allowing gay marriage in the entire United States.

Now the type of therapy offering "conversion" of homosexuals is forbidden in many states.  

Once again.  A type of therapy is forbidden by law as harmful to people, which was before that not deemed harmful and even beneficial - on the basis of claims of those same psychologists.

First, psychologists claimed, after religious ministers who claimed that homosexuality is a mortal sin, that homosexuality is a mental health disorder and needs treatment. 

Then in some states (like South Carolina) it still remained a disorder, with gay conversion therapy available, and in New York such a therapy is forbidden by the government. 

Oh, and let's not forget that in the times of slavery in the U.S. psychiatrists claimed that slaves running from their masters are sick because the idea for a slave to consider that he deserves freedom and may want to run away from his owner is an expression of a mental health disorder. 

That "disease" was "discovered" in 1851 and given a name - "drapetomania".

6 years after this "discovery" the U.S. Supreme Court, judges who were themselves (or their families) slave-owners, refused to cancel slavery by a court precedent, the way they cancelled criminality of homosexuality - and plunged the supposedly "democratic" country into a bloody civil war over slavery.

By the way, in Russia which was at that time a monarchy, and also had slavery, slavery was abolished by a King's (Czar's) decree, earlier than in the U.S. - and no war ensued.

Of course, later, when Russia was captured by the Bolsheviks, in the USSR psychology and psychiatry was extensively used to "treat" dissidents into a vegetative state. 

Soviet psychiatrists invented the term "sluggish schizophrenia" to pin it upon anybody who disagreed with the government. 

So, how can we claim that psychology is a science if it sets as diseases personal opinions disagreeing with the status quo, or is used to justify silencing and punishment of slaves, women, dissidents, parents, heterosexuals, and pronounce certain behavior, opinions or thought processes as a disease, not disease or a crime under public pressure or based on political or financial influences?

And how can it be legal that people are convicted of crimes, their children are taken away, and now the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding whether a person can be put to death - on the testimony of psychologists?