Psychology. Trouble or Not?

I'm probably going to regret writing this, but here goes. I'm just writing to you, Steve, and the problems I have had with psychology, esp at the uni level.

It would take a lot of time to explain, but we, as in my class at Uni, learned about the earliest psych (short for psychiatry and psychology theories) that always starts with Freud. I, personally, think Freud is full of shit, and I’m amazed at how much his “theories” have influenced thinking.

Then we go through Freud, Piaget, Skinner, Erikson, Maslow, Adler and others, but, curiously, Jung is never taken seriously or thought about, and we skip over him quite quickly. I find that depressing because Jung had a lot of interesting ideas (have you looked into his “Red Book"?), but in academia he is now ignored. He just gets a passing mention and then we skip over him for other ideas, like the awful “behaviorism.”

Clinical psychology was what really put me off. I thought it would be about how to treat potential patients. I was really surprised at how this subject was treated, especially given my previous treatment that I referenced in the DT thread.

I felt like I didn’t learn a thing that I didn’t already know.

And though the aforementioned men were an influence, we didn’t really talk about the issues with their ideas. And, again, it’s like Jung was missing, as though he was some sort of black sheep.

But Freudian ideas of sexualizing children. That’s okay. Skinner, Pavlov, Harlow, etc, torturing animals — that’s okay, and then they extrapolate the results to humans… that’s okay too!

Then you get into the DSM and its iterations (I think the Brit version of the DSM is called ICD?) wherein pharmaceutical and insurance companies get more and more of a say because every single deviation from the “norm,” which is not defined, can be “treated” or “medicated.”

I don’t know what it is in UK, but the DSM over the years has become narrower over what is a “mental illness” or a “problem.” (The DSM was invented so that doctors could have a definition or reason to charge insurance companies.)

Anyway, that is just the start of why I have a problem with psychology as currently practiced.

I have to sleep for a couple hours and then go to work.
 
Thanks for that Doppelgänger. It's cleared things up, now I know the direction that this thread should go!

Helping Maeve with Physics yesterday, I was quite annoyed reading a side note, which stank of propaganda. It said something about our Nuclear Power Stations, adding that "they were quite different from that which was involved in the Chernobyl disaster."

Yeah well, they're not so different that they couldn't cause a similar disaster. We have probably just been lucky so far.

I'm disappointed to hear that Freud was 'the man' when it seems to me that Jung's ideas were far more important. I rarely hear Freud mentioned when I listen to even mainstream podcasts. Jung is often mentioned in podcasts that I listen to, well, far more than Freud.

If schools shut introduce blinkers, what can we do to change this? If anything.
 
Freud is everywhere in academia from sociology to, yes, psychology. She is certainly going to get bombarded with it, but that is not the reason I would go back and avoid wasting two years (before jumping to something better, luckily) of my youth... It's the money. The field was already saturated back then, the situation it's likely to be worse now.
 
If schools shut introduce blinkers, what can we do to change this? If anything.
shut --> should?

Perhaps study arts subjects instead. To my mind, the purpose of education is not to act as a sponge, to soak up facts. The important thing is to learn how to think. If this needs to take place outside of science (because science education restricts thinking) then so be it.
 
shut --> should?

Perhaps study arts subjects instead. To my mind, the purpose of education is not to act as a sponge, to soak up facts. The important thing is to learn how to think. If this needs to take place outside of science (because science education restricts thinking) then so be it.

I think there's a distinction between education and training - which does she want? Personally I'd rather have surgery from a well-trained and experienced surgeon not someone with a degree in art history :).

A good degree course contains elements of both I guess. Learning about Freud's thinking doesn't prevent challenging it. In fact, knowledge is required to do just that or we're simply parroting other people's opinions aren't we?
 
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It's a start. And who knows, maybe it's exactly at the core?
Well I think I meant that the podcasts about NDE's (for example) might appeal to her more. I'd take a lot of evidence to believe in astrology. I suggested one way her results could have happened for conventional reasons, and I don't think she has replied.

David
 
A good degree course contains elements of both I guess. Learning about Freud's thinking doesn't prevent challenging it. In fact, knowledge is required to do just that or we're simply parroting other people's opinions aren't we?
Well, not to focus on Freud specifically here, but the extent to which challenging mainstream thinking may be praised or discouraged in a particular environment is something of an unknown quantity I'd say. It may depend as much on how personalities interact as on any formal policy.
 
Hi Steve,

Am a bit confused because initially you asked D what her advice would be, but in a follow-up post said you weren't looking for advice, just what "should be done".

Anyhow, what I think should be done (aka my advice?) is for your daughter to spend a year or two on a working holiday before she decides exactly what she wants to do - but of course you (and your daughter) would have to evaluate whether this really is the right advice for her. All I know is that I wish somebody had suggested this to me before I enrolled straight into university from high school. Fruit-picking and the other "menial" labour that a non-degreed person would have to do whilst travelling (e.g. if you have a car you can deliver pizzas) gives one valuable life experience (and, I would argue, insight into psychology!) that it is hard to pick up in other ways, and which gives one a broader perspective from which to choose a preferred degree.

Anyhow, I hope that's not too much of a diversion. Wishing your daughter success no matter what she decides!
 
shut --> should?

Perhaps study arts subjects instead. To my mind, the purpose of education is not to act as a sponge, to soak up facts. The important thing is to learn how to think. If this needs to take place outside of science (because science education restricts thinking) then so be it.

That's nice and all, but studying the arts will get your nowhere in the US (and perhaps the UK and Europe?). Universities should be about learning how to think, but those with arts or humanities degrees have no job prospects. Universities have changed from being higher learning to job-training zones. Apparently, we should just all go into STEM and mathematics.

In the US, people with Masters Degrees that aren't STEM are working retail jobs, bar tending, and as servers (restaurant jobs) and paying off their massive school debt. They were lied to about their degrees, and it is a huge problem because the school debt thing is eventually going to blow up and eventually affect the economy.
 
I'm disappointed to hear that Freud was 'the man' when it seems to me that Jung's ideas were far more important. I rarely hear Freud mentioned when I listen to even mainstream podcasts. Jung is often mentioned in podcasts that I listen to, well, far more than Freud.

It is so disappointing that Freud is still revered.

If schools shut introduce blinkers, what can we do to change this? If anything.

I don't know how to change it.

We are living in a system that is working against us (us meaning regular people). It's a question that bothers me, but I don't know how to change it. I hate how we fight one another over superficial "conservative" and "liberal" beliefs, and the Internet amplifies it to the point we can't have a conversation.

Good luck with your daughter, though. You can always PM me about it, if you feel like it. If she is determined, though, there might be nothing you can do. She will have to figure it out for herself in time.
 
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