Taylor

Of course there are dozens of theories out there for each of those questions. But as for depression, it can be seen as the body becoming "stuck" in a sort of "fight or flight" response. That is, 20,000 years ago - if you were confronted by a bear in the middle the forest, your body goes into overdrive, pumping adrenaline and other hormones into the system to provide you with the energy needed either to fight your way out of the situation, or run and seek safety. With depression, constant stressors can trigger a perpetual response that simply can't be maintained - it can result in pain, weakness, lethargy, and impaired cognition. It can be so debilitating that the individual can't move out of bed and may even want to kill themselves to make it stop. Thus, it's not just a function of neurotransmitters and a "chemical imbalance" but is a systemic condition that is currently treated with psychopharmaceuticals, but for which there are promising trials on drugs that don't act on the brain whatsoever.

Some psychological questions lend themselves better to "science" than others. Much of psychology is correlational, but you can certainly perform scientific experiments from which you can draw causal inferences. Yes, there are certainly restrictions on what you can control, and certainly not just from an ethical standpoint. But the same is true of biology. What you can't do with psychology that you can do with physics is predict individual behavior. Some might argue that certain laws exist from a conditioning/behaviorist school, but for the most part, psychology is vastly more complex than something like physics - truly understanding it is beyond our capacity to comprehend - thus, the need for probability and statistical analysis.

Then there's what Hoover actually believed/espoused in his writings: American Individualism by Herbert Hoover "In our individualism we have long since abandoned the laissez faire of the 18th Centurythe notion that it is "every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost." We abandoned that when we adopted the ideal of equality of opportunitythe fair chance of Abraham Lincoln. We have confirmed its abandonment in terms of legislation, of social and economic justice, in part because we have learned that it is the hindmost who throws the bricks at our social edifice, in part because we have learned that the foremost are not always the best nor the hindmost the worstand in part because we have learned that social injustice is the destruction of justice itself. We have learned that the impulse to production can only be maintained at a high pitch if there is a fair division of the product. We have also learned that fair division can only be obtained by certain restrictions on the strong and the dominant.…" Memoirs; The Origins of the Depression "Two schools of thought quickly developed within our administration discussions. First was the 'leave it alone liquidationists' headed by Secretary of the Treasury Mellon, who felt that government must keep its hands off and let the slump liquidate itself. But other members of the Administration...believed with me that we should use the powers of government to cushion the situation. To our minds, the prime needs were to prevent bank panics such as had marked the earlier slumps, to mitigate the privation among the unemployed and the farmers which would certainly ensue... The record will show that we went into action within ten days and were steadily organizing each week and month thereafter to meet the changing tidesmostly for the worse. In this earlier stage we determined that the Federal government should use all of its powers: (a) to avoid the bank depositors' and credit panics which had so generally accompanied previous violent slumps; (b) to cushion slowly, by various devices, the inevitable liquidation of false values so as to prevent widespread bankruptcy and the losses of homes and productive power; © to give aid to agriculture; (d) to mitigate unemployment and to relieve those in actual distress; (e) to prevent industrial conflict and social disorder; (f) to preserve the financial strength of the United States government, our credit and our currency, as the economic Gibraltar of the earthin other words, to assure that America should meet every foreign debt, and keep the dollar ringing true on every counter in the world; (g) to advance much-needed economic and social reforms as fast as could be, without such drastic action as would intensify the illness of an already sick nation; (h) to sustain the morale and courage of the people in order that their initiative should remain unimpaired, and to secure from the people themselves every effort for their own salvation; (i) to adhere rigidly to the Constitution and the fundamental liberties of the people. And there's his acutal record, which contradicts many of the statements you quote: Hoover advocated a strict laissez-faire (hands-off) policy dictating that the federal government should not interfere with the economy - Nope, rejected by his administration rather early, and he is on the record as early as 1922 in denouncing laissez-faire policy. With his industrial labor program he convinced business leaders to maintain or raise wages and provide for work-sharing by promising them safety from union pressure in return. He proposed a new department of education, a monthly stipend for seniors, and provided an enormous increase in farm subsidies. Then there's that massive tax increase I mentioned earlier. I could go on. These are not the actions of someone who advocated a strict laissez-faire policy. Hoover might have been able to dampen the effects of the depression by using the federal government's authority to establish financial regulations and provide direct relief to the unemployed and homeless.However, Hoover continued to adhere rigidly to his hands-off approach. - From wiki: He advocated tax reduction for low-income Americans (not enacted); doubled the number of veterans' hospital facilities; wrote a Children's Charter that advocated protection of every child regardless of race or gender; proposed federal loans for urban slum clearances (not enacted); advocated $50-per-month pensions for Americans over 65 (not enacted); chaired White House conferences on child health, protection, homebuilding and home-ownership. Hoover was a progressive Republican, whose policies had more in common with today's Democratic party than those you would call "Hooverists"

What does cutting spending have to do with "Hooverism"? Despite a stated belief that spending should be restrained, spending increased significantly under Hoover - some 50% in a failed bid to stimulate the economy. During his term as President, the debt/gnp ratio shot up from 16% to 40%. Like Roosevelt, he believed in the importance of a balanced budget. And like Roosevelt, he believed the best way -- the necessary way -- of accomplishing that was through tax increases. He did so significantly with the Revenue Act of 1932, which doubled the estate tax, increased corporate taxes, and more than doubled tax rates on "the rich," ushering in the era of progressive taxation. It was the biggest tax increase in history. It brought in a lot of extra revenue that was spent as quickly as it came in. These policies have very little in common with an "if I cut back government should too" approach, and seem more in line with the modern day progressive than the guy waving the tea pary sign.