A war without bullets: Psychology’s role in disarming the workforce and weaponizing the industrial-medical complex

Psychology’s engagement in the war with bullets has been through a somewhat hidden collusion with the industrial-military complex. In this paper I argue that psychology’s war without bullets is that which has occurred through its more public collusion with the industrial-medical complex. The industrial-medical complex refers to a global spread of corporations that work, for profit, to deliver health care services and products. The complex includes, among its major players, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. These industries have become extraordinarily profitable (Chen, 2015) through the privatisation of health care, an increased reliance on private health insurance and selling off public health care assets and the transferring of health care responsibilities from the public to the corporate sector. Psychology’s collusion with this part of the industrial sector is keenly felt in the workplace, which serves the focus for this paper.