What’s The Point of Materialist Psychology?

I have often wondered what the point of materialist psychology is.  Set aside mental illnesses that are manifestations of biological pathologies.  I am talking about, for example, the man who goes to a therapist because he is having marital difficulties  Why shouldn’t the therapy session proceed along these lines:

Patient (let’s call him John):  Doc, I feel terrible.  My marriage is on the rocks.

Therapist (let’s call him Sigmund):  Let’s explore why that might be.

John:  Oh, way
ahead of you there doc.  My wife Jill caught
me having sex with her best friend Sally. 
Let me tell you; she was not keen on that.  And you know I feel kinda bad about it too.

Sigmund:  Do you hope to save your marriage and reconcile with Jill?

John:  Of
course.  I really love that woman.

Sigmund:  Then you should stop having sex with Sally.

John:  Well, that’s
the problem.  I really enjoy having sex with
Sally.  I don’t want to stop.

Sigmund:  You have
to choose Jill or Sally.  You can’t have
both.

John:  Why
not?  You aren’t one of those religious
nuts are you?

Sigmund:  No, of
course not.  90% of psychologists are
materialists, and I count myself in that vast majority of my colleagues.  I just mean that as a practical matter Jill
is unlikely to tolerate you having sex with Sally while you are married to her,
and even you mentioned that it made you feel bad.

John:  Those are both practical problems to overcome, not insurmountable obstacles to me getting what I want.  Suppose I figure out a way to hide my trysts with Sally from Jill. That problem is solved.  Now, I just need to get over the “makes me feel bad” part, and that’s why I came to you.  I’ve read a little in your field, and I assume I feel bad because of the tension between my actions and the outdated and restrictive societal norms holding up monogamy within marriage as an ideal, not to mention the fact that when I married Jill I swore an oath to “forsake all others until death do us part.” 

Sigmund:  Yes,
those tensions could lead to anxiety.

John:  Exactly.  So what do you think?  How can I stop feeling so anxious?

Sigmund:  I am not
sure I can help you.  For better or
worse, society considers adultery and oath-breaking to be immoral.  

John:  But you and I both know the word “immoral” has no real meaning.  As materialists you and I have seen past all of that religious mumbo jumbo.  We know that particles in motion just are.  At bottom everything is caused by blind, unguided, amoral material forces.  There is nothing wrong with me having sex with Sally while I am married to Jill, because there is nothing really wrong with anything at all.

Sigmund:  Still, powerful
societal forces millennia-in-the-making are arrayed against you.  You’ve already told me you feel bad, so you
are not a sociopath with no empathy.  The
tension you describe won’t just go away.

John:  But isn’t the very essence of the psychoanalytical model of treatment helping people – people like me – to get past a mental conflict that triggers anxiety?

Sigmund:  Well,
yes, that’s a large part of what we do . . .

John:  Well, I have
some kind of conflict that causes me anxiety when I have sex with Sally and
hide it from Jill.  I know it is not
wrong in any meaningful sense.  But I still
feel bad.  What do you mean you can’t
help me?  That’s what you do.

Psychiatrist Jeffrey Burke Satinover wrote:

As a science, psychology thus inevitably tends toward an amoral view of man, in just the same way that it tends toward a view of him that has no place for free will and choice. Some psychologists have had the courage—if that is indeed what it is: foolhardiness might be a better term; intellectual consistency, at least—to claim that if the scientific view of man is both true and complete, and if this view leads inevitably to the abolition of “man” as embodied in such concepts as “freedom” and “goodness” (and consequent upon these, such concepts as “dignity” and “nobility of character”), why then, let us be truly abstemious and do away with them entirely, as has proposed B. F. Skinner. 

Why indeed, John asks Sigmund.  Why doesn’t the materialist, reductionist psychoanalyst
try to help John stop feeling bad and enjoy the freedom that comes from his
clear-eyed metaphysics? 

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