RE: When will psychology finally be recognized as a pseudoscience?
May 13, 2021 at 6:46 pm
(This post was last modified: May 13, 2021 at 6:53 pm by Belacqua.)
(May 13, 2021 at 11:19 am)John 6IX Breezy Wrote: I think many forum members are slightly confusing psychology as a clinical practice, with psychology as a scientific endeavor. By analogy they are as unique to each other as biology is to medicine.
Psychology studies the behavioral and cognitive aspects of the brain. Vision, perception, memory, language, emotion, knowledge, reasoning, these are just a fraction of the things studied under cognition. To be a psychologist you often have to be highly interdisciplinary. Behavioral geneticists are experts in the biological side of things. Social psychologists on the sociological and anthropological side. Some psychologists study ingestive behavior, satiety, eating, and are experts on the nutritional side of things. You have fields with names as impossible to pronounce as psychoneuroimmunology. You have psychologists that work on computers and technology, for example, with the military developing cockpits suited for the cognitive capacity of fighter pilots
Everywhere the brain goes psychology goes.
Yes this is an excellent point.
I need to remember that psychology is a big umbrella that covers a lot of different aspects, and some are a lot more sciencey than others.
So for example the immediate relief of acute psychological issues like crippling anxiety, I'm guessing, would be likely to involve more chemistry and things like fMRI studies. And it is without doubt a good thing to study.
Then on the less sciencey side, my niece is a professional music therapist for children, and she helps them with things like the ability to focus on tasks and take turns. She works especially with little kids who have trouble adapting to school. This is a lot more interpersonal, and anything quantifiable is fairly fuzzy. Like little Subject A could sit still for 7.5 minutes instead of 6 minutes.
And naturally psychologists would work on all kinds of issues that aren't apparent to me. Like finding ways to make long-distance flights more tolerable. And who can forget the psychologists who worked with the CIA to make torture more effective.
Since I'm not involved in those projects and (knock wood) I currently don't have any acute symptoms that need relieving, I've been thinking more of the personal-knowledge side of psychology. Like a long-term and not very scientific effort at getting to know oneself, and understanding why one turned out a certain way.
But you're right I need to keep a broader view of things.
(May 13, 2021 at 6:25 pm)brewer Wrote: There are all kinds of applications derived from behavioral psychology that are being used in treatment. PTSD, autism, addiction and phobias easily come to mind.
And many many concepts introduced by Freud and Jung are still used by serious and up-to-date psychologists today.
This is not a question of "cancel culture," where an earlier guy gets rejected tout court.