On Sun, 09 Jan 2000 19:18:15 -0600 Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> writes:
>Doug writes:
>
>Carrol Cox wrote:
>
> >What is a theory of psychology a theory *of*?
> >
> >Off hand, I can't see any reason for having one.
>
> So why are you clinically depressive? Even if you give a
>biologically
> based answer, you've got a theory of psychology.
>
>One can reduce depression *in the abstract* to chemical activity in
>the brain. But in every person that chemical activity is a constituent
>in a unique history (an ensemble of social relations), which is so
>extraordinarily complex that neither now nor in the future can
>one elaborate a "science" that will apply to particular people. One
>can have a theory of neuroscience and one can have a theory of
>social relations. One cannot have a theory of the individual. So
>what can a psychological theory be *of*.
>
>Qualification: Learning theory is perhaps possible and needed -- and I
>believe some progress in learning theory (separable from either
>neurology
>or social relations) has been made. But it also probably ought to have
>its
>own name.
Many of the radical behaviorists (disciples of BF Skinner) now a days prefer to call their discipline behaviorology in order to distinguish it from psychology which they regard as a kind of pseudoscience. Skinner did regard learning theory as being distinguishable from neuroscience but was like neuroscience in being a natural science.
Jim F.
> Theory of Consciousness is in wild disarray but is perhaps
>possible. But neither theory would tell us / does tell us anything in
>respect to the many pseudo questions "psychology" seems to revel
>in.
>
>Carrol
>
>P.S. I put this in a postscript because I'm not sure of the vocabulary
>appropriate to it. Thinking of course always in a sense *is* chemical
>activity. I.e., thinking about this sentence I'm writing generates
>different
>chemical activity than would thinking about the book I'm reading to
>review.
>Probably the difference in chemical activity is not significant enough
>(what
>would be significant enough, and will we ever know?) to make any more
>or less prolonged changes in brain chemical activity. But clearly some
>kinds
>of thinking (say daily fear of expected sexual molestation that night
>by
>one's
>father) could / probably does make changes in the brain's ongoing
>chemical
>activity. (One label for one kind, or perhaps a genus of kinds, of
>changes of
>this sort is PTSD.) Then there develops defects in the flow and
>re-uptake of
>serotonin by the neurons in the brain. One is clinically depressed.
>But
>no two
>people with that kind of chemical activity express it in the same way.
>For that
>one needs to search for social causes, which are probably
>undiscoverable.
>There are some general empirical observations possible. Somewhere over
>half, perhaps considerably more than half, of depressed people are
>afraid of
>the phone. For us, the answering machine is one of the beauties of the
>20th century. But not all are. All are in some sense "afraid" of a lot
>of things, but it would be foolish to try to explain these fears. They
>are simply part of that unique history to which we give the label of
>"an individual person." I take it that what you and Zizek think of
>as psychology tries to explain these phenomena. I think that is
>silly.
>
>P.S. 2 My therapist tells me (in response to some questions I asked)
>she always tries to get her clients not to ask "Why?" (I of course
>have never asked why.) She said she has one client who is really
>insistent on knowing "why," so she speculates with him to keep
>him happy. Most of her clients, however, can be weaned away from
>this sort of wildgoose chase. The question "Why?" (Why am I
>afraid of telephones when in a deep depression but not when in
>a mild depression?) presupposes what (I assume) does not
>exist -- an answer to the question "What is psychology a theory
>*of*?. Geology is the study of the earth, its internal structure,
>etc. Political economy is the study of the social relations and
>culture of the capitalist mode of production. What is psychology
>the study of?
>
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