On Monday 11 April 2005 11:19 am, Miles Jackson wrote:
>Oops. I've been teaching and doing research in psychology for
>about 15 years now, and you're way, way off base. We do in
>fact have a mountain of scientific evidence--including
>well-controlled experimental studies--that give us a significant
>grasp of "how the mind works". To put it bluntly, your
>argument is based on ignorance of the facts.
I base my opinion on my own experience with the industry and the reading I've done. When my marriage started failing I agreed to participate in counseling sessions, which I went into with all good faith in the field. I did not come out with any faith at all in marital counseling. It was easy to analyze that my ex had co-dependency issues, but no one knew how to deal with me, because I wasn't co-dependent. We tried 4 different counselors and all were equally unhelpful, suggesting procedures that only addressed the symptoms (sex) and were completely unable to provide any clues into resolving the underlying problems. Unfortunately I didn't figure all this out right away. It took a long time of trying the various "procedures" recommended, then discovering it only made things worse.
Both my ex and I read a lot on the subject, and when I finally stumbled on DSM4, I realized that the field was simply a racket. That no one could escape being labeled mentally disabled to some degree. Everyone was a victim. That did it for me.
I look at how we are drugging kids for ADD, how millions are taking anti-depressents (I've had doctors try to push them on me), how we call alcoholism a disease, and otherwise make an entire population into victims, needing their services and those of their best partner, the pharmaceutical companies. Please tell me why I should have any faith in such a racket.
And how can we expect to ever categorize the myriad unique responses of people based on nature, nurture, or whatever into anything that resembles science? We can't even figure out how all the chemicals react with one another in the brain or how medicine chemicals interact with each other. Those two fields would have to be well past their infancy (which they are not) to allow psychology to even have a shot at being a science.
--tully