For me it’s very difficult to understand what psychology is really about and what it consists of. Everyone seems to have different ideas which are often mutually exclusive. Not only that but psychologists seem to make little effort to bridge the enormous gaps that have been obvious for decades, or even centuries. Formally, psychology is a disaster zone.
Nowadays efficient people-smart multi-national corporations are on the rise while local businesses go to the wall. If these smaller concerns misunderstand the psychology of the marketplace as fundamentally as my local optician then it’s no mystery. Here’s what happened…
While Sternberg & Grigorenko’s (2001) view is extremely attractive and practical, it is nevertheless a bottom-up approach that assumes that fixing the research process will also seal higher level theoretical fissures. Henriques’ (2003) contrasting, although not necessarily contradictory, view is that extra levels of explanation or insight are required to link together theoretical models from the top downwards. Henriques is not just aiming to unify psychology here, but also to unite the natural and social sciences. In his view, psychology provides just such a bridging point.
Since psychology’s split from philosophy around the turn of the last century, much talk has focussed on how the discipline should model itself on the natural sciences. Wilhelm Wundt, the godfather of experimental psychology thought psychology should look towards physics for its inspiration. Physics and psychology are, of course, very different disciplines, but, despite this, they do still have one common goal.
[Illustration by M H Evans]
William of Occam has a lot to answer for. Let me explain. Psychology bloggers are getting excited over recent research in biological psychiatry that integrates the environment into aetiological models of mental illness. While these developments are to be welcomed, they do come relatively late in the day, bearing in mind we’ve already got evidence for myriad environmental causes including urbanicity, child abuse, social class and so on.
Continue reading “Environmental Effects in Mental Illness Models”
I just finished Lauren Slater’s book: “Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological experiments of the Twentieth Century”. These included the work done by B. F. Skinner on operant conditioning, Darley & Latane on the ‘bystander effect’, Harry Harlow’s soft monkey without milk, Rosenhan’s two fingers to psychiatric diagnosis and of course Milgram’s explanation of the Holocaust: people are weak and obedient.
It made me wonder. What will be the great psychological experiments of the 21st Century? Will there be any?
It can be difficult to see aspects of your own identity clearly without a contrast. As an Englishman amongst the English it’s hard for me to understand many aspects of my own Englishness. In the same way, without comparing myself to other people, I can’t accurately fathom my own personality. And so travelling is not just a chance to relax, eat out and take in the sights, but it’s an opportunity to get some perspective.
“The only possible conclusion the social sciences can draw is: some do, some don’t.”
– Ernest Rutherford
Morton Hunt’s excellent ‘Story of Psychology‘ helps explain why people doubt the scientific basis of psychology. Think about the famous figures in the history of the more physical sciences: Biology has Charles Darwin, Physics has Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, Chemistry has Francis Crick and whole load of other people whose surnames are immediately recognisable: Anders Celsius, Robert Wilhelm Bunsen and Louis Pasteur. Now famous psychologists.
Think for a moment…who have you got?
The Royal Institution write to tell me they’ve got some fascinating public events coming up, one of which they are…
“…putting on with the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. It promises to be a good event – it’ll be interesting and a bit lighthearted. The last event in this series got into the ‘Best by day’ section of Time Out, and we’re hoping for an even better event this time.”
Sounds like fun!
More information is available on our website.
“Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George’s Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest previous lifetime intake on record is 2,000 pills.” The Guardian
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